“I have,” answered Uncle Wiggily.

“Well, then, you may give me the bread and sugar and after I eat them I will start in on you.  I will take you off to my den, to my dear little foxes.  Eight, Nine and Ten.  They have numbers instead of names, you see.”

“But I don’t want to give you Nurse Jane’s sugar and bread, and go with you to your den,” said the rabbit gentleman.  “I don’t want to!  I don’t like it!”

“You can’t always do as you like,” barked the fox.  “Quick now—­the sugar and bread!”

“What about the yeast cake?” asked Uncle Wiggily, as he held it out, all wrapped in shiny tinfoil, like a looking-glass.  “What about the yeast cake?”

“Oh, throw it away!” growled the fox.

“No, don’t you do it!” whispered a voice in Uncle Wiggily’s ear, and there was the sunbeam he had met the other day.  “Hold out the yeast cake and I will shine on it very brightly, and then I’ll slant, or bounce off from it, into the eyes of the fox,” said the sunbeam.  “And when I shine in his eyes I’ll tickle him, and he’ll sneeze, and you can run away.”

So Uncle Wiggily held out the bright yeast cake.  Quick as a flash the sunbeam glittered on it, and then reflected itself into the eyes of the fox.

“Ker-chool!” he sneezed.  “Ker-chooaker-choo!” and tears came into the fox’s eyes, so he could not see Uncle Wiggily, who, after thanking the sunbeam, hurried safely back to his bungalow with the things for Nurse Jane.

So the fox got nothing at all but a sneeze, you see, and when he had cleared the tears out of his eyes Uncle Wiggily was gone.  So the sunbeam did the bunny gentleman a favor after all, and if the coal man doesn’t put oranges in our cellar, in mistake for apples when he brings a barrel of wood, I’ll tell you next about Uncle Wiggily and the puff ball.

STORY XXIV

UNCLE WIGGILY AND THE PUFF BALL

“Are you going for a walk to-day, as you nearly always do, Uncle Wiggily?” asked Nurse Jane Fuzzy, the muskrat lady housekeeper, of the rabbit gentleman, as he got up from the breakfast table in the hollow stump bungalow one morning.

“Why, yes, Janie, I am going for a walk in the woods very soon,” answered Uncle Wiggily.  “Is there anything I can do for you?”

“There is,” said the muskrat lady.  “Something for yourself, also.”

“What is it?” Uncle Wiggily wanted to know, sort of making his pink nose turn orange color by looking up at the sun and sneezing.  “What is it that I can do for myself as well as for you, Janie?”

“Cream puffs,” answered Miss Fuzzy Wuzzy.

“Cream puffs?” cried the bunny uncle, hardly knowing whether his housekeeper was fooling or in earnest.

“Yes, I want some cream puffs for supper, and if you stop at the baker’s and get them you will be doing yourself a favor as well as me, for we will both eat them.”