“Right gladly will I take it,” said Uncle Wiggily. So Mrs. Littletail, the rabbit lady, wrapped the pot of the little rubber plant, with its thick, shiny green leaves, in a piece of paper, and Uncle Wiggily, tucking it under one paw, while with the other he leaned on his crutch, started off over the fields and through the woods, with the jam tarts in his pocket. Over toward the home of the Wibblewobble duck family he hopped.
Mr. Longears, the nice old rabbit gentleman, had not gone very far before, all at once, from behind a snow-covered stump, he heard a voice saying:
“Oh, dear! I know I’ll never find him! I’ve looked all over and I can’t see him anywhere. Oh, dear! Oh, dear! What shall I do?”
“My! That sounds like some one in trouble,” Uncle Wiggily said to himself. “I wonder if that is any of my little animal friends? I must look.”
So the rabbit gentleman peeked over the top of the stump, and there he saw a queer-looking boy, with a funny smile on his face, which was as round and shiny as the bottom of a new dish pan. And the boy looked so kind that Uncle Wiggily knew he would not hurt even a lollypop, much less a rabbit gentleman.
“Oh, hello!” cried the boy, as soon as he saw Uncle Wiggily. “Who are you?”
“I am Mr. Longears,” replied the bunny uncle. “And who are you?”
“Why, I’m Simple Simon,” was the answer. “I’m in the Mother Goose book, you know.”
“Oh, yes, I remember,” said Uncle Wiggily. “But you seem to be out of the book, just now.”
“I am,” said Simple Simon. “The page with my picture on it fell out of the book, and so I ran away. But I can’t find him anywhere and I don’t know what to do.”