“You did me a favor,” said Hickory Dickory Dock, “and now I have done you one, so we are even.” And that’s a good way to be in this world. So, if the ink bottle doesn’t turn pale when it sees the fountain pen jump in the goldfish bowl and swim I’ll tell you next about Uncle Wiggily and the late scholar.
CHAPTER XXII
UNCLE WIGGILY AND THE LATE SCHOLAR
“Heigh-ho!” cried Uncle Wiggily Longears, the nice rabbit gentleman, one morning, as he hopped from bed and went to the window of his hollow-stump bungalow to look out. “Heigh-ho! It will soon be Spring, I hope, for I am tired of Winter.”
Then he went down-stairs, where Nurse Jane Fuzzy Wuzzy, the muskrat lady housekeeper, had his breakfast ready on the table.
Uncle Wiggily ate some cabbage pancakes with carrot maple sugar sprinkled over them, and then as he wiped his whiskers on his red tongue, which he used for a napkin, and as he twinkled his pink nose to see if it was all right, Nurse Jane said:
“Yesterday, Uncle Wiggily, you told me you would like me to make some lettuce cakes today; did you not?”
“I did,” answered Uncle Wiggily, sort of slow and solemn like. “But what is the matter, Nurse Jane? I hope you are not going to tell me that you cannot, or will not, make those lettuce cakes.”
“Oh, I’ll make them, all right enough, Wiggy,” the muskrat lady answered, “only I have no lettuce. You will have to go to the store for me.”
“And right gladly will I go!” exclaimed the bunny uncle, speaking like some one in an old-fashioned story book. “I’ll get my automobile out and go at once.”