“Thank you, very much, Uncle Wiggily,” said Peter-Peter. “And you, too, Dickie and Nellie. If ever I can do you a favor I will.”
So he went on, and, when Dickie and Nellie had flown home, Uncle Wiggily hopped along to Grandpa Goosey Gander’s house. There the old rabbit gentleman had a nice time playing checkers with grains of corn, but on his way home, when he was in the middle of the woods, all of a sudden it began to rain very hard.
“Oh, dear!” cried the bunny uncle. “Nurse Jane was right. It is raining, and I have no umbrella! I will get all wet, and my rheumatism will be worse than ever. Oh, dear! I wish I had some place to go in!”
And just then Uncle Wiggily heard a voice singing.
“Peter-Peter, Pumpkin-Eater,
Had a wife and could not keep her.
He put her in a pumpkin shell,
And there he kept her very well.”
Uncle Wiggily looked through the bushes, and there he saw a cute little house, made from a pumpkin, with a hollowed-out corn-cob for a chimney. And in the door of the house stood the little man, Peter-Peter himself.
“Hello, Uncle Wiggily!” called Peter-Peter. “Come in out of the rain.”