“All right,” said Uncle John Hare, and the Yellow Dog Tramp said he’d never had his picture taken in his life and would be tickled to death to have one to send home to his old mother who lived in New Hampshire and hadn’t heard from him since he’d left home.
Well, when they came to the picture place the photographer, who was a long-legged crane—as I told you once upon a time some fifty stories ago, or maybe more—came out of his little picture gallery.
And, oh, my! he shivered so that he almost spoilt the picture, for he had to bring his camera outside because the four reindeer and the sleigh and the two little rabbits and the Yellow Dog Tramp couldn’t get into his little shop.
You see, the crane didn’t have any stockings on and his great long legs got dreadfully cold.
“Now, look pleasant, if you please,
Excuse me while I take a sneeze!”
and Photographer Crane almost sneezed his head off, as he stood on one leg and pulled the other one out of the snow way up under his feathers. Then he sneezed again.
But, by and by, the pictures were taken, and Uncle John Hare paid for them all, and the Yellow Dog Tramp took his over to the Postoffice and sent it to his mother, way up in New Hampshire, and on the back he wrote:
“Oftentimes I’m thinking,
Mother dear, of you,