“Yes, I will!” shouted a voice up in the air, and Charlie, who was just going to put his head under his wing and go to sleep, roused up and crowed:
“Oh, are you going to help me? Who are you?”
“Uncle Wiggily Longears, in his airship!” was the answer. “I see what is the trouble. You have no wind for your sailboat. Here, catch that!” And, hovering up in the air over the chicken boy’s boat, the rabbit gentleman dropped down a clothes line he had bought in the store for Nurse Jane. “Hold fast to that, Charlie!” cried Uncle Wiggily. “I’ll keep hold of my end and I’ll soon pull you to shore with my airship.”
Charlie held the rope tightly in his claw, and off started Uncle Wiggily in the airship, towing the chicken boat along over the duck pond. Soon he was safe on shore and, after thanking the rabbit gentleman; Charlie said:
“The next time I go sailing I am going to take a balloon full of wind along with me to blow my sail. Then I will be all right.”
So this shows you a clothes line is good for something, after all, and on the page after this, if our window shade doesn’t roll up so fast that it jumps through the dish pan, like a circus lady off an elephant’s back, I’ll tell you about Uncle Wiggily and Lulu Wibblewobble.
STORY XXIII
UNCLE WIGGILY AND LULU WIBBLEWOBBLE
“My goodness me sakes alive, and some peanut pancakes!” cried Nurse Jane Fuzzy Wuzzy, the muskrat lady, as she saw Uncle Wiggily, the rabbit gentleman, out in the yard one day punching some sofa cushions. “What in the world are you doing, Wiggy?” asked Nurse Jane.
“Well,” replied the old gentleman rabbit for whom the muskrat lady kept house, “I am trying to make these sofa cushions softer, if you please, Nurse Jane.”
“Softer? What for?” she asked.