“Because if I say I’m too stiff and old to go to the store for you she’ll say I’m not too stiff to play tag with her. And I certainly am!” said Uncle Wiggily, positive like and semi-emphatic. “I don’t want to move about quickly at all today. I just want to go slow and easy like.”
“Then you may,” said Nurse Jane. “I only want you to go to the store for me and get Baby Bunty’s shoes!”
“What’s that?” cried Mr. Longears, and he gave such a jump that his pink nose stopped twinkling. “I thought you said you wanted me to go to the store for you, Nurse Jane.”
“So I do. I’d have to go after Bunty’s shoes if you didn’t, and, really, I haven’t time. But you don’t have to take Baby Bunty, so you may hop as slowly as you like. I took her down and she tried on the shoes yesterday. I left them to be stretched. All you have to do is to bring them home.”
“Oh, that’s all right,” said Uncle Wiggily. “I like Baby Bunty, and all that, but when I want to hop slowly she wants to play tag and the like of such nonsense. I’ll go to the store alone.”
Away he started, leaning on his red, white and blue striped rheumatism crutch that Nurse Jane had gnawed for him out of a cornstalk. And Uncle Wiggily had not hopped very far before he heard a voice calling:
“Oh, Uncle Wiggily! Wait for me! Wait a minute!”
“My goodness me, sakes alive and some peanut hash!” thought the bunny rabbit. “I hope that isn’t the Pipsisewah or the Skuddlemagoon after me!”
He was just going to hide behind a tree when he saw that it was Baby Bunty who was hopping along through the woods.
“Wait a minute, Uncle Wiggily!” she cried.