"Oh!" exclaimed Uncle Wiggily. "I—I don't seem to know you very well."
"You'll know me better after a bit," said the red flamingo bird, clashing its beak like a pair of tailor's shears. "I'm the bird that Alice from Wonderland used for a croquet mallet when she played with the Queen of Hearts."
"Oh, now I know!" said the bunny. "Won't you have lunch with me?" he asked, trying to be polite. "I'm having a hot lunch, though Nurse Jane left me a cold one, and—"
"You are going to have a much hotter lunch than you imagine!" said the red flamingo bird. "Look out! I'm getting sizzling hot!" And indeed he was, which made him such a red color, I suppose. "I'm going to burn you!" cried the bird to Uncle Wiggily, sticking out his red tongue.
"Burn me? Why?" asked the poor bunny gentleman.
"Oh, because I have to burn somebody, and it might as well be you!" said the flamingo. "Look out, now!"
"Ha! Indeed! And it's you who had better look out!" cried a new voice. And with that the cook—the same big lady, shaped like a ham, whom Uncle Wiggily had last seen in the kitchen of the Duchess—this cook hopped nimbly in through a window of the hollow stump bungalow.
"I'll fix him!" she cried, catching up the flatirons from the shelf over the stove and throwing them at the flamingo. "Get out! Scat! Sush! Run away!" And she threw the fire shovel, the dustpan, the sink shovel, the stove lifter, the broom and the coal scuttle at the flamingo. My, but that cook was a thrower!
She didn't hit the red flamingo bird with any of the things she threw, but she tossed them so very hard, and seemingly with such anger, that the bird was frightened.
"This is no place for me!" cried the flaming red bird, drawing in his red tongue. "I'll go make it hot for Mr. Whitewash, the polar bear. He might like some heat for a change from his cake of ice."