And, would you believe me, right in the middle of one of the flowers something white moved and wiggled.  Then it gave a little “Mew!” and then Uncle Wiggily cried: 

“Oh, Mrs. Cat, come here quickly!  Here is Snowball!  She was asleep inside of one of the water lilies!”

And, surely enough, there was the little lost kittie, just awakening in one of the flowers, and she was exactly the color of it.  And, oh, how glad she was to see her mamma again, and how her mamma did hug her!

“How did you get in that flower?” asked Uncle Wiggily.

“Oh, when I went after my ball a big dog chased me,” said Snowball, “so I jumped into one of the lilies and I fell asleep, and the flower went shut and I stayed there.  But now I’m home, and I’m glad of it,” and she just kissed Uncle Wiggily on the tip end of his nose, that twinkled like a star on a frosty night.

So that’s how Snowball was lost and found, and I’m going to tell you about Uncle Wiggily and the sunflower, that is if the sunfish doesn’t spread the butter too thick on the baby’s bread with his tail and make her slide out of her high chair.

STORY XVII

UNCLE WIGGILY AND THE SUNFLOWER

Mrs. Cat and her daughter Snowball liked Uncle Wiggily so much that they wanted him to stay with them a long time.

“You can build yourself a nice little corncob house next to ours,” said Snowball, “and live in it; and you can tell me a story every night.”

“Oh, but rabbits live underground, and not in corncob houses, though such houses are very nice,” said Uncle Wiggily.  “I guess I’ll have to be traveling on.”

“If you stay, I’ll bake you a cherry pie every day,” said Mrs. Cat.  “And you can help find Snowball when she gets lost again.”

“Cherry pie is very good, and you are very kind,” said the rabbit politely, “but I have my fortune to find.”

“Well, if you can’t stay you can’t, I s’pose,” said Snowball; “but I’m never going to get lost again,” and she put her little nose down deep inside a water lily and smelled it, and oh, how sweet and spicy it smelled!

So Uncle Wiggily got ready to start off on his travels again, and in his satchel he put a whole cherry pie that Mrs. Cat had baked for him.

“It will taste good when you are hungry,” she said.

“Indeed it will,” agreed Uncle Wiggily, and he wished he was hungry then and there, because he just loved cherry pie.

He was walking on through the woods, when, all at once, he heard some music playing, and the name of the song was “Never Take Your Ice Cream Cone and Drop it in the Mud.”

“Ha!  I believe that is the funny monkey and one of his hand organs!” exclaimed the rabbit.  “I shall be glad to see him again.”

So he looked through the trees, and there, surely enough, was the monkey, and he was playing the organ with his tail, and in one paw he held a cocoanut and in the other paw an orange, and first he would take a bite of the orange, and then a bite of the cocoanut.