Pretty soon the two friends came to where crooked cats were sold for crooked money. By this time Uncle Wiggily was so tired, from having to jump back and forth to follow the crooked man walking a crooked mile, that the bunny uncle thought he would go back to his hollow-stump bungalow and rest.
But the crooked man, after he had bought the crooked cat, still went along with Uncle Wiggily, and it was a good thing he did. For, when Uncle Wiggily was about halfway home, out from behind a stump a bad old fox jumped at him. Zip!
“Ah, ha!” cried the fox. “Now I have you!” And then he saw the crooked man and crooked cat, the fox did, and he rubbed his eyes with his paws, once or twice, and cried out:
“Oh! What does this mean? I must be asleep and dreaming, for never can there really be such strange, crooked things in this world as that crooked man and cat. I must be dreaming, and pretty soon I’ll wake up in my den. I’ll just lie quietly and not move, or I might have a worse dream.”
And, thinking it was all a dream, the fox lay down in the woods to sleep, and so he didn’t get Uncle Wiggily after all, thanks to the crooked man and cat. The bunny uncle hurried away from the sleeping fox, and the twisted chap, with the doubled-up pussy, soon reached their own crooked house, where they lived happily for many crooked years, catching crooked candy mousies that cried crooked candy tears.
So no more at present, if you please. But in the next chapter, if the olive oil and the vinegar speak nicely to each other when they meet at the party in the lettuce salad, I’ll tell you about Uncle Wiggily and the barber.
CHAPTER XVII
UNCLE WIGGILY AND THE BARBER
Uncle Wiggily Longears, the nice old rabbit gentleman, walked across the sitting-room of his hollow-stump bungalow, to where a looking-glass hung on the wall. He looked in the glass, and rubbed his paw, thoughtful like, up and down his chin.
“What is the matter?” asked Nurse Jane Fuzzy Wuzzy, the muskrat lady housekeeper. “Did something bite you?”