“Run after it, quickly!” cried Nurse Jane. “Baby Bunty will feel very badly if her doll is lost! Run after it for her!”
“I will,” said the rabbit gentleman. Not stopping to put on his tall, silk hat, and forgetting all about his red, white and blue striped rheumatism crutch, out of his hollow stump bungalow rushed Uncle Wiggily. After the doll he hopped.
But as fast as he hopped the doll skiddled along just as fast, always keeping ahead of Mr. Longears.
“Oh, ho! I’ll get you yet!” cried the bunny. And he hopped faster and faster. But the doll skiddled along even more quickly. Uncle Wiggily was hopping as he had never hopped before.
“What makes that doll skiddle along?” panted the bunny, all out of breath. “I cannot see any one pulling or pushing her. It can’t be a trick of the Pipsisewah or the Skuddlemagoon, for I can see neither of those bad chaps. What makes the doll move along? I must find out, but first I must get hold of it!”
So the bunny hopped along faster and faster, and the doll skiddled along until, all of a sudden, Baby Bunty’s play-toy caught on a twisted tree root, was held fast, and Uncle Wiggily, making a big jump, grabbed it. Then he saw that a thin, black but very strong thread was tied around the doll.
“Ha! Some one was pulling that doll along by this black string, and I couldn’t see it,” said the rabbit gentleman. “I wonder who did it?”
“I did!” cried a jolly voice, and out from behind a bush jumped Baby Bunty. “I tied the long thread to my doll, and then I hopped ahead and pulled the doll after me!” said Baby Bunty. “I wanted you to hop along fast, and not get stiff, Uncle Wiggily, and you did! Ho! Ho! Ha! Ha!”
Uncle Wiggily rubbed his pink nose. He shook his paw at Baby Bunty, but he couldn’t help laughing.
“I’m not stiff now,” he said, “but I may be tomorrow.”