Then some voices spoke: “We made the big pond get little for you,” said the green stalks and leaves on the bank. “We shrank and also stretched the pond for you. We are rubber plants, you know, and rubber can stretch and shrink.”
That’s just how it happened. Weren’t those stretchy rubber plants good to Baby Bunty and Mr. Longears? And if the bluebell flower doesn’t ring so late in the morning that the alarm clock gets late for school, and can’t have any sawdust candy for recess, I’ll tell you next about Uncle Wiggily and the funny stump.
STORY XX
UNCLE WIGGILY AND THE FUNNY STUMP
“Good-by, Uncle Wiggily! Good-by!” called Baby Bunty to Mr. Longears, the rabbit gentleman, one morning, as he stood on the front porch of his hollow stump bungalow.
“What’s that? ‘Good-by?’ Why, you aren’t going to leave me; are you?” cried Uncle Wiggily. “Are you going to leave me after I found you in the woods, and took care of you and—and all that!”
“Oh, but you say I make you chase me and play tag, and that I won’t let you sit around and get stiff and old and all the like of that! I’d better go away,” and really it looked as though Baby Bunty were going away, for she had a little bundle in one paw.
“Oh, don’t go away!” begged Uncle Wiggily. “I don’t mind chasing you, and I was only fooling about you making me get old and stiff.”
“And I was only fooling about going away!” laughed Baby Bunty. “I’m only going to take my painting lesson from Mother Nature. She knows how to color the flowers red, blue and golden, and she is giving me painting lessons. My paints are in this bundle. When I finish learning how to make a blue sky turn pink I’ll come back to you.”
“Please do!” cried Uncle Wiggily. “I shall miss you.”
“Then, in an hour or so, if you walk through the woods you may meet me coming home from my painting lesson,” spoke Bunty.