“I am very sorry, Mr. Whitewash, but we are all out of stovepipe this morning. I expect some in at the end of the week.”
“But I cannot wait that long,” said the white polar bear gentleman. “Our old pipe may fall down any day, and fill the house with smoke again. Then the fire engines will come out and squirt water in our cave, and there’ll be a terrible time. I must have some stovepipe.”
“Well, I’ll tell you what I’ll do,” said the cow gentleman. “I sold some pipe to Grandfather Goosey Gander, the duck gentleman, the other day, and after he used it awhile he said he wanted a different kind.
“So he took down that I had sold him, and got some different kind. The old pipe is out in his back yard now, and I think he would give it to you.”
“It will do no harm to ask, anyhow,” said Mr. Whitewash.
Over he went to the house of Grandfather Goosey Gander, and there, surely enough, was the pipe.
“Certainly you may have it,” said the duck gentleman. “I am glad to give it to you. But be careful, for it is full of black soot, and it may get on your white coat.”
“Oh, I can wrap it up in a paper,” said Mr. Whitewash, which he did. Then, taking care not to get the stovepipe, though it was wrapped up, against his snow-white fur, off Mr. Whitewash started for the cave-house, where he lived with the Stubtail family.
Did you ever put up a stovepipe? No, I guess you did not. Well, it is not easy work, as Mr. Whitewash soon found. Either the pipe he got from Grandfather Goosey Gander was too large to fit in the chimney hole or else the chimney hole was too small to let the pipe slide in. Anyhow, Mr. Whitewash tried and tried again, and once more, but the pipe would not fit.
“I guess I’ll have to get on a stepladder,” said the polar gentleman, breathing hard.