“And you shall certainly have what you want!” cried Uncle Wiggily, as he got ready to go to the store. Soon he was on his way, wearing his fur coat, and hopping along on his corn-stalk rheumatism crutch, while his pink nose was twinkling in the frosty air like a red lantern on the back of an automobile.
“A loaf of home-made bread and three and a half pounds of granulated sugar,” said Uncle Wiggily to the monkey-doodle gentleman who kept the grocery store. “And the best that you have, if you please, as it’s for Mrs. Littletail.”
“You shall certainly have the best!” cried the monkey-doodle gentleman, with a jolly laugh. And while he was wrapping up the things for Uncle Wiggily to carry home, all at once there sounded in the store a loud:
“Pop!”
“My! What’s that?” asked Uncle Wiggily, surprised like and excited. “I heard a bang like a gun. Are there any hunter-men, with their dogs about? If there are I must be careful.”
“No, that wasn’t a gun,” said the monkey-doodle gentleman. “That was only one of the toy balloons in my window. I had some left over from last year, so I blew them up and put them in my window to make it look pretty. Now and then one of them bursts.” And just then, surely enough, “Pop! Bang!” went another toy balloon, bursting and shriveling all up.
Uncle Wiggily looked in the front window of the store and saw some blown-up balloons that had not burst.
“I’ll take two of those,” he said to the monkey-doodle gentleman. “Sammie and Susie Littletail will like to play with them.”
“Better take two or three,” said the monkey-doodle gentleman. “I’ll let you have them cheap, as they are old balloons, and they will burst easily.”
So he let the air out of four balloons and gave them to Uncle Wiggily to take home to the bunny children.