“Oh, I mean outside, of course,” replied Uncle Wiggily. “I’ll leave you to look after the bungalow, inside, while I clean up outside. You see there are so many last year’s dried leaves about, here in the woods, that if they were to catch fire our bungalow might burn.”
“Mercy!” cried Nurse Jane. “I wouldn’t want that to happen. Oh, my!”
“No, indeed,” Uncle Wiggily said. “Once was enough. The last time we had a fire you and I had to board around with our friends. Still, it was not so bad as it might have been, for I met Mother Goose, and did some favors for her and her friends.”
“What were you thinking of doing to the leaves?” asked Nurse Jane, curious like and inquisitive.
“Why, I thought I’d rake them up in a pile and make a soft place, so if Sammie and Susie Littletail, the rabbit children, came along on their way home from school, they could jump on the leaves as they sometimes do in the hay.”
“Very good,” Nurse Jane said. “You rake up the leaves and I’ll wash the dishes.”
So Uncle Wiggily began. For a rake he used the dried branch from a tree. It had many little ends to it, almost like the teeth of a rake, that branch had.
“I wonder if a rake ever gets the toothache?” thought Uncle Wiggily, as he pulled and poked the leaves into piles. “If it does, it must hurt very much because there are so many teeth.”
But the bunny uncle did not have a real rake, only a tree branch, which he used as one, and that had no teeth to ache, I’m glad to say.
“It will be good to get the layers of dead, dried leaves off the ground,” said Uncle Wiggily, “for soon the April showers will bring the May flowers, and they find it easier to spring up if there is no blanket of leaves over them to hold them down.”