But he didn’t, I am glad to say, and when Baby Bunty reached home and tried on her new shoes they fitted perfectly, and Uncle Wiggily wasn’t hardly stiff at all. And if the lawn mower doesn’t try to cut a slice off the cake of soap for the goldfish to take a bath, I’ll tell you next about Uncle Wiggily and Bunty’s hair ribbon.
STORY XI
UNCLE WIGGILY AND BUNTY’S RIBBON
Once upon a time Baby Bunty, the little rabbit girl, who was hidden in a hollow stump until she was found, said to Uncle Wiggily:
“Will you come with me for a walk in the woods today?”
“Why, yes, Baby Bunty, I think I will,” answered Mr. Longears. “But I am a bit stiff, and my rheumatism hurts a little, so please don’t ask me to chase you or do anything exciting like that.”
“I won’t,” promised Baby Bunty, but, as she tied her red sky-blue pink hair ribbon around her neck, the little rabbit girl smiled in a queer way.
“No,” she said to herself, as Uncle Wiggily took his red, white and blue striped rheumatism crutch down off the fence post, “I won’t make him chase me, but I’ll keep him from going to sleep. He’s a dear old rabbit gentleman, but he’s getting old—or he thinks he is. I must keep him lively!”
So Uncle Wiggily and Baby Bunty hopped off through the woods. Nurse Jane Fuzzy Wuzzy stood in the doorway of the hollow stump bungalow and watched them.
“My! Baby Bunty has on her best hair ribbon today,” said the muskrat lady housekeeper. “I hope nothing happens to it.”
As Baby Bunty hopped along, now running ahead of Uncle Wiggily and now lagging behind to pick a pretty flower, all of a sudden her green yellow brown hair ribbon caught on a bush and the bow was untied.