"No, she didn't dream it! That really happened!" said Uncle Wiggily to himself, who was just then hopping through the fields back of the house where Cora Janet lived. "So this is her home, is it?" went on the bunny gentleman to himself. "And she hasn't any candles for her birthday cake! Too bad!"
Uncle Wiggily had hopped along just in time to hear Cora Janet's mother asking for candles of the neighbors.
"It's so late that all the stores are closed," went on Mrs. Blake, "or I'd go get some candles for Cora."
"Never mind," spoke Mother. "She will have to bear her disappointment as best she can."
"No! That must not be!" said Uncle Wiggily to himself. "I cannot give her real candles, but I can leave on her steps some slivers of the pine tree. They have in them pitch, tar and resin and will burn almost like candles. When I was a rabbit boy I often lighted these pine-tree candles."
Not far away were the woods, and, hopping across the field in the dusk of the evening, Uncle Wiggily, with his sharp teeth, soon gnawed off some pine-knot splinters from one of the trees. In olden times, when there were no electric or kerosene lamps, children used to study their lessons in front of the fireplaces, by these pine knots.
"These will do for birthday-cake candles," whispered Uncle Wiggily, as he hopped back to Cora Janet's house with a paw full of the pine knots. He put them on the stoop, and then, with his hind paws, he kicked some gravel from the front walk up against the dining-room windows.
"What's that?" asked Cora Janet, as she heard the noise.
"Some bad boys playing tick-tack," said one of the girls at the party. "They're playing tricks because they weren't asked."
"I'll see who it is," spoke Mother.