[XXIV]
UNCLE JERRY CHUCK
Soon Jimmy Rabbit's friends arrived at his party in throngs. And soon Nimble Deer's antlers bristled with hats and coats of many kinds and colors.
"I must look like a Christmas tree," Nimble thought. "I wish Jimmy Rabbit and his friends would come and dance around me so I might see the fun."
But they didn't. They stayed down in a little hollow some distance away. Nimble could hear their voices. And they seemed to be having a delightful time.
As for Nimble, he wasn't having a good time at all. "I'll never help at another party!" he promised himself. He couldn't believe that midnight—and the end of the party—would ever come.
At last, however, he took heart. For old Uncle Jerry Chuck came hurrying up and began taking hats and coats off Nimble's antlers. And Nimble knew then that the party must be almost over.
"This is a good hat!" Uncle Jerry muttered to himself. "I'll take it." And then he said, "This is a good coat! I'll take it." Then he looked closely at another hat. "This is a good one, too!" he remarked. "I might lose the other. I'll take this one, too—and this coat here," he added, selecting a second coat that pleased him.
Little did Uncle Jerry Chuck dream that the Deer's head was a real, live one. And just as the old chap reached for the second coat Nimble Deer had to cough. He didn't want to. Hadn't Jimmy Rabbit cautioned him not to stir—not to open his mouth?
But the cough came all the same, right in Uncle Jerry Chuck's ear. And Uncle Jerry jumped. He dropped both hats and both coats. And then he waddled off as fast as he could go and scrambled over the stone wall, out of sight. He didn't even wait to get his own rusty coat and tattered hat, which he had left lying on the ground.