Then the singing voice stopped, and Uncle Wiggily heard some one crying:
“Oh, dear! Ouch, how it burns! Oh, where can it be? Where can it be?”
The flickering light came nearer, and Uncle Wiggily, looking through the trees, saw that it was not a lightning bug, or firefly, but a little man, with a leather apron on, and a hammer and other tools hanging from his belt. The tools jingled and rattled. Behind the man, who was pulling it along as if it were a sled, with a rope through one the handles, was the washtub. In one hand the man carried a lighted candle, and, all the while, he kept on saying:
“Oh, dear! Ouch! How it burns me! Oh, my!”
“Excuse me,” said Uncle Wiggily, politely, “but you seem to be in trouble. Perhaps I can help you. What burns you?”
“This candle,” answered the man. “I ought to have a candlestick to hold it, but I dropped my nice brass candlestick as I ran through the woods, and now I have to hold the candle in my bare fingers. And it is so short that it burns me. Ouch!”
“Ha! Then this is what you want,” Uncle Wiggily said, and he handed over the candlestick he had picked up.
“The very thing!” cried the little man, in delight. “Thank you so much. Now my fingers won’t burn any more.”
He stuck the end of the lighted candle in the stick and spoke again.
“I’m the candlestick maker, as you can see; I make candlesticks, but just now I am not making any, as I am on a race with the butcher and baker to see who first will get to Mother Goose’s house. We started out in a dreadful rain-storm, when we could float in our tubs like boats, but the butcher and baker seem to have gotten ahead of me.”