“No,” Uncle Wiggily answered. “But I understand that the butcher’s two friends, the baker and the candlestick maker, are having a race with him, each one in a tub. They may sail along any day now. I guess I’ll go out and look for them.”
“What! In all this rain?” cried Nurse Jane, in surprise. “You’ll catch cold in your rheumatism, I’m sure.”
“Oh, no, I’ll wrap up well in my rubber coat, and put on my rubber boots as I did before,” said the bunny uncle, making his nose twinkle like a gold tooth in the wax doll.
Off started the old rabbit gentleman, carrying a big umbrella so that too many rain-drops would not get on his tall silk hat. He walked along through the woods, down from the trees of which the rain-drops dripped. There were many puddles, but Uncle Wiggily kept as much out of them as he could.
“It is getting quite some colder,” he said to himself, as he put one paw in his pocket to warm it—warm his paw, I mean, not his pocket, for that was warm already. “I wouldn’t be surprised to see it snow.”
And, in a little while, a few flakes of snow did begin to fall, dodging their way in between the rain-drops, and sort of playing tag with one another.
“How pretty the flakes look,” said Uncle Wiggily, coming to a stop to watch them. “I think I’ll sit down a minute and look at them.” He found a fallen log, which, being under a Christmas tree, was not as wet as it might otherwise have been, and down Uncle Wiggily sat on that.
More snowflakes fell, and they looked so pretty that Uncle Wiggily stayed longer than he meant to, sitting on the log. It kept on getting colder and colder, and finally the bunny uncle said:
“Well, I mustn’t sit here any longer. I’ll get up and go back to my nice, warm, cozy hollow-stump bungalow. Yes, I’ll get up and——”
But Uncle Wiggily did not get up. He couldn’t! He had frozen fast to the log, which had some water on it. The cold air had made the water freeze, and Uncle Wiggily was held as fast there as if he had sat down in sticky fly paper—even more tightly, I believe.