“Yes,” said the robin with a broken wing, “I think perhaps we had better do that.”
Down went Uncle Wiggily in his airship. It was raining very hard now, and the lightning flashed, and the thunder rolled and rumbled very loudly indeed.
“There is a good house near that pond and barn, for us to go in out of the storm!” cried the rabbit gentleman, pointing with one ear down below, for he needed both paws with which to steer. “It is the duck pen where my friends, the Wibblewobbles, live. I’ll go there,” Uncle Wiggily said.
Down went the airship, close to the barn, where Gup, the kind horse lived.
“You hurry right into the duck pen!” cried Gup to Uncle Wiggily. “I’ll take your airship in my stable until the storm is over.”
So Uncle Wiggily hurried into the duck pen, taking the poor robin with him, and, no sooner was the rabbit gentleman inside, than he heard Lulu and Alice, the duck girls, crying as hard as they could cry.
“What is the matter with them?” he asked of Mrs. Wibblewobble.
“They are afraid of the thunder storm,” said the duck lady. And Lulu and Alice were lying in a dark room, with pillows over their heads so as not to see the lightning, and hear the thunder. As for Jimmie, the boy duck, of course he was not afraid. Boys, whether they are ducks or not, are never afraid of thunder storms.
“You mustn’t mind the thunder storm,” said Uncle Wiggily, to Lulu and Alice. “It will not hurt you. Just pretend that the thunder is only the noise of a big circus wagon going over a bridge, and the lightning is only electric flashes from a trolley car. Then you will not mind it so much.”
So Lulu and Alice pretended that way, and the robin with the broken wing sang for them, and soon the thunder storm was over, and never after that were the duck girls frightened. For whenever it thundered, Lulu would say: