“Now for Jimmie’s bruise,” said the rabbit, and he took some soft green leaves, and made a plaster of them, and with some ribbon-grass for a string he tied the plaster on Jimmie’s foot, and that was almost well.  Then Uncle Wiggily made a little salve, from some gum out of a cherry tree, and bound up the glass cuts on Lulu’s feet.

“Now, I will lead you to your Aunt Lettie’s house,” said the rabbit, “and you won’t be lost any more.”  So the three Wibblewobble children felt much better and happier, and when they were almost at their aunt’s house, a big hawk swooped down out of the sky and tried to bite Lulu.  But Uncle Wiggily hit the bad bird with his barber-pole crutch, and the hawk flew away, flopping his wings and tail.

“Oh, how good, and brave, and strong you are!” cried Lulu to Uncle Wiggily, and then all three duck children kissed him.  Soon they were at the goat-lady’s home, and Aunt Lettie was very glad to see the rabbit gentleman, and also glad to have the children back.  So she invited Uncle Wiggily to stay to supper, and very glad he was to do so.

He also stayed all night at Aunt Lettie’s house, and he had quite an adventure, too, which I shall tell you about directly, when, in case the fire shovel doesn’t slide down hill on a cake of ice and break its roller skates the next bedtime story will be about Uncle Wiggily and the berry bush.

STORY XXVIII

UNCLE WIGGILY AND THE BERRY BUSH

“Well, children, I think I will soon have to be leaving you,” said Uncle Wiggily Longears one morning to the three Wibblewobbles, when he had stayed all night at their Aunt Lettie’s house.  That was after the old gentleman rabbit had found the three ducks lost in the woods, you remember, and had taken them to where they were visiting the old lady goat.  “I must pack my valise and travel on,” said Uncle Wiggily.

“Oh, can’t you stay a little longer?” asked Alice Wibblewobble, as she tied her sky-blue-pink hair ribbon in a flopsy-dub kind of a bow knot.

“Yes, do stay!” urged Jimmie as he tossed up his ball, which Lulu, his sister, caught.  “We’ll have some fun together and you can play on my ball team, Uncle Wiggily.”

“Oh!  I am much too old for that,” said the rabbit, “though I like to watch you play.  Besides, I have the rheumatism, and I have to keep on looking for my fortune.  So I will travel forward once more.”

“Well, if you must go, I suppose you must,” said Aunt Lettie, the old lady goat.  “But at least let me put you up a little lunch.  Let me see, what shall it be?  I think a tomato can sandwich, and some brown paper cake with paste frosting on would be nice.  And then, too, I can give you some fine wooden pie.”

“Oh, excuse me!” exclaimed the rabbit, “but while it is very kind of you, I cannot eat such things.  I never could chew a tomato can, nor yet a wooden, or even a sawdust pie.”