"Sure I'll let you help me wash the dishes," said Jacko. "It's lots of fun, and it makes your hands real clean. Come on up." So he let down the basket on a rope and pulled Mugsie Smugsie up to the house on top of the pole.
"Can't I come up, too?" asked Susie.
"Sure!" cried Jacko, and then he and Mugsie pulled up the rabbit girl.
"Now we all three can help wash the dishes," said Susie. And, surely enough, those three animal children began to wash the dishes. But Jacko and Mugsie Smugsie splashed the sudsy water about so that Susie said:
"Oh, you had better let me finish, boys, and you can set the house to rights and dust and sweep." Now, of course, girls can wash dishes better than can boys, I know that very well, and Susie had them all washed and dried while Jacko and Mugsie were sweeping and dusting the dining-room. And very nicely they did it, too.
And then, all of a sudden, there was a noise out in the kitchen. Susie screamed and cried:
"Oh, dear! Oh, dear! He'll get me! He'll get me!"
"Run quick!" cried Jacko to Mugsie Smugsie. So they ran out, and there was the burglar fox getting ready to jump at Susie. Somehow or other the fox had managed to pull himself up the tree in the basket, the rope of which Jacko had forgotten to take in after Susie was raised up by it.
"Now I'm going to have a good dinner!" cried the fox, smacking his lips.
"No, you're not, either!" yelled Jacko, and then and there he caught up the big dishpan full of water and threw it at the fox—threw the water, not the dishpan, you understand. And that fox in an instant was as wet as if he'd fallen into a mill pond, and he was so scared and frightened and alarmed and astonished and ker-slostered that he slid down the rope so fast that he burned his tongue.