“A new dress, eh?” asked Uncle Wiggily. “Pray, what is going on?”
“My dress is going on me, as soon as it comes home, Uncle Wiggily,” the muskrat lady answered, laughingly. “And then I am going on over to the house of Mrs. Wibblewobble, the duck lady. She and I are going to have a little tea party together, if you don’t mind.”
“Mind? Certainly not! I’m glad to have you go out and enjoy yourself,” said Uncle Wiggily, jolly like and also laughing.
“But I can’t go if my new dress doesn’t come,” went on Nurse Jane. “That is, I don’t want to.”
“Look here!” said the bunny uncle, “I’ll tell you what I’ll do, Nurse Jane, I’ll go for your dress myself and bring it home. I have nothing to do. I’ll go get your dress at the dressmaker’s.”
“Will you, really?” cried the muskrat lady. “That will be fine! Then I can curl my whiskers and tie a new pink bow for my tail. You are very good, Uncle Wiggily.”
“Oh, not at all! Not at all!” the rabbit gentleman said, modest like and shy. Then he hopped out of the hollow-stump bungalow and across the fields and through the woods to where Nurse Jane’s dressmaker made dresses.
“Oh, yes, Nurse Jane’s dress!” exclaimed Mrs. Spin-Spider, who wove silk for all the dresses worn by the lady animals of Woodland. “Yes, I have just finished it. I was about to call a messenger-boy cat and send it home, but now you are here you may take it. And here is some cloth I had left over. Nurse Jane might want it if ever she tears a hole in her dress.”
Uncle Wiggily put the extra pieces of cloth in his pocket, and then Mrs. Spin-Spider wrapped Nurse Jane’s dress up nicely for him in tissue paper, as fine as the web which she had spun for the silk, and the rabbit gentleman started back to the hollow-stump bungalow.
Mrs. Spin-Spider lived on Second Mountain, and, as Uncle Wiggily’s bungalow was on First Mountain, he had quite a way to go to get home. And when he was about half way there he passed a little house near a gray rock that looked like an eagle, and in the house he heard a voice saying: