“Oh, goodie!” cried Grunter and Squeaker. For they were the first and second little pigs, you see. Uncle Wiggily had saved Grunter from the bad wolf when the growling creature blew down Grunter’s straw house. And, in almost the same way, the bunny uncle had saved Squeaker, when his wooden house was blown over by the wolf. But Twisty-Tail, the third little pig, Uncle Wiggily had not yet helped.
“I’ll look for Twisty-Tail to-day,” said the rabbit gentleman as he started off for his adventure walk, which he took every afternoon and morning.
On and on went Uncle Wiggily Longears over the snow-covered fields and through the wood, until just as he was turning around the corner near an old red stump, the rabbit gentleman heard a clinkity-clankity sort of a noise, and the sound of whistling.
“Ha! Some one is happy!” thought the bunny uncle. “That’s a good sign—whistling. I wonder who it is?”
He looked around the stump corner and he saw a little animal chap, with blue rompers on, and a fur cap stuck back of his left ear, and this little animal chap was whistling away as merrily as a butterfly eating butterscotch candy.
“Why, that must be the third little pig!” exclaimed Uncle Wiggily. “Hello!” called the rabbit gentleman. “Are you Twisty-Tail?”
“That’s my name,” answered the little pig, “and, as you see, I am building my house of bricks, just as it tells about in the Mother Goose book.”
And, surely enough, Twisty-Tail was building a little house of red bricks, and it was the tap-tap-tapping of his trowel, or mortar-shovel, that made the clinkity-clankity noise.
“Do you know me, Uncle Wiggily?” asked the piggie boy. “You see I am in a book. ‘Once upon a time there were three little pigs, and——’”
“I know all about you,” interrupted Uncle Wiggily. “I have met Mother Goose, and also your two brothers.”