“We just wanted to see if we could catch a snail,” said the singing tailor. “We didn’t mean to hurt her, but it says in Mother Goose’s book that four-and-twenty tailors went out to catch a snail, and, as we were not very busy this morning, we went out. But, oh! how fierce she did look with her horns! I’m not going snail-hunting any more.”
“Nor I,” cried the other twenty-three tailors in a chorus. Then they thanked Uncle Wiggily for having driven the snail away, as he did, by making believe Jimmie Wibblewobble, the duck boy, was coming after her (since ducks like snails very much). And the tailors each gave Uncle Wiggily a spool of thread, so Nurse Jane had all she wanted, and Grandpa Goosey’s button was sewed on.
And if the basket of soap bubbles doesn’t fall down-stairs and spill ink on the white table cloth just as it is going to the dance, I’ll tell you next about Uncle Wiggily and the bat.
CHAPTER XXVI
UNCLE WIGGILY AND THE BAT
Uncle Wiggily Longears, the nice little boy bear—Oh, please be so kind as to excuse me, as the telephone girl says when she rings the dinner bell at supper time. I mean Uncle Wiggily Longears, the nice old rabbit gentleman, put on his red, white and blue-striped rheumatism tall silk hat and——
Eh? What’s that? Something else wrong? Oh, yes; to be sure. I meant to say he took his red, white and blue-striped rheumatism crutch, and put his tall silk hat on over his ears, and then he started out of his hollow-stump bungalow for a walk.
I don’t know what’s the matter with me in this story—making so many mistakes—unless it was that I danced the fox-trot backward the other night, and it turned out to be a goose-walk. Anyhow, I’ll try to be more careful after this.
Out stepped Uncle Wiggily, starting off toward the woods, but he had not gone very far before Nurse Jane Fuzzy Wuzzy, the muskrat lady, called to him.
“Where are you going, Uncle Wiggily? Don’t you know that it is after supper, and will soon be dark? Then why do you go to the woods?”