“May I bring my rubber ball?” asked Baby Bunty, as she came out of the hollow stump bungalow with a very small pumpkin-colored hair ribbon around her ears.
“Oh, yes, bring your ball along,” said Uncle Wiggily kindly. “But please don’t sprinkle any water from it on me while I’m asleep.”
“I won’t,” promised Baby Bunty. And then, as Uncle Wiggily hopped along on his red, white and blue striped rheumatism crutch, and as Baby Bunty ran along beside him, the little rabbit girl said: “Oh, dear! If he’s going to sleep every time we come to the woods, I’ll have no fun at all. But maybe I’ll find a way to keep him awake,” she said to herself, as she bounced her rubber ball.
On they went through the green woods, Baby Bunty running to and fro as fast as an automobile, and Uncle Wiggily coming along more like a trolley car, substantial-like, though unpoetical. The little rabbit girl picked pretty flowers now and then, while Mr. Longears chewed a bit of birch bark, or nibbled at sassafras and wintergreen, hoping it would cure his rheumatism.
“Now here is a nice place for you to play, Baby Bunty,” said Uncle Wiggily when they reached a green glade in the forest. “And I’ll just sit down on this soft, mossy log and think a bit.”
“Yes, I know what that means!” whispered Baby Bunty to herself. “It means he’ll go to sleep and won’t play tag or anything with me, and I can’t have any fun! Oh, dear!”
She bounced her ball on a bare, sandy place, while Uncle Wiggily picked out the softest, green, mossy log he could find. He laid aside his rheumatism crutch, took off his tall silk hat, and, folding his paws over his red vest, closed his eyes. His pink nose stopped twinkling.
“He’s asleep!” said Baby Bunty.
All of a sudden her bouncing rubber ball gave a big jump, and before the little rabbit girl could get her paws on it the rubber ball bounded right over on Uncle Wiggily’s bare head.
“Oh, I say! A-ker-choo! What’s that?” he cried, waking up all at once, and not partly, as he did sometimes.