"And I'll go with you," said the old gentleman rabbit, for he wasn't going to let his small nephew go up a strange beanstalk and perhaps get lost in the clouds, you know.
Not good, kind Uncle Lucky. No, sireemam; so they hopped out of the Luckymobile and started up the beanstalk, and by and by, after a pretty long time, they came to the top and the first thing they saw was their friend American Eagle and his wife, and she was sitting on her nest hatching out the big eggs which she had laid.
"We'll need lots of eagles now that we've gone to war," said the big bird, and he flapped his wings and sang "Yankee Doodle Dandy" three times over and then once more. And this made the old gentleman rabbit so excited that he stood up and made a speech, and then he threw his old wedding stovepipe hat up into the air and gave three cheers and half a dozen tigers and two or three bears.
And after that Billy Bunny opened his knapsack and took out an
American flag and put it on the top of the beanstalk so that all the
people in the aeroplane could see it and say "Hip-hur-ray for the U.
S. A.!"
"When the little eagles come out of their shells you must bring them to call on me," said good, kind Uncle Lucky to Mrs. Eagle. "I have some popcorn and lollypops at home, and I know how children like those things."
And this made Mrs. Eagle very happy and Mr. Eagle very proud, and he helped the two little rabbits to climb down the beanstalk in time for me to write what they did in the next story, which will be about an adventure in the Friendly Forest.
STORY XXVIII.
BILLY BUNNY AND SCATTERBRAINS.
After Billy Bunny and Uncle Lucky reached the ground, for they had climbed down the beanstalk, you remember, as I told you in the last story, they jumped into the Luckymobile and drove off toward the Friendly Forest, and when they had gone maybe a mile in and out among the trees, for there wasn't really any automobile road to go on, you know, they came across Scatterbrains, the gray squirrel.
Now Uncle Lucky knew Old Squirrel Nutcracker very well, and as the old gentleman squirrel was very nice and well behaved it made Uncle Lucky provoked to think that his son should be such a scatterbrains. So Uncle Lucky stopped the automobile and said: