The sun was so warm, after the rain, that it soon dried the mud on the bunny gentleman's clothes, and with the bunch of grass, and the sharp pine tree cone, he soon had loosened the bits of dirt.
"Now I'm all right again," said Uncle Wiggily out loud. And though of course Tommie did not understand rabbit talk, the little boy could see what Uncle Wiggily had done to help himself after the mud puddle accident.
"I say!" cried Tommie, before he thought, "will you please lend me that pine tree cone clothes brush? I want to clean the mud off my white stockings so I can go to the party!"
Uncle Wiggily looked up in surprise! He had not known, before, that Tommie was there; but the bunny heard what the little boy said. With a low and polite bow of his tall silk hat, Uncle Wiggily tossed the bunch of grass and the pine cone to Tommie. By that time the mud had dried so the little boy could scrape most of it off his stockings.
"I hope you have a nice time at the party," said Uncle Wiggily, in rabbit language, of course. And then, as Tommie scraped the last of the dried mud away, leaving only a few spots on his stockings, the bunny gentleman hopped out of the bush and on his way.
"And I can go to Alice's house without having to run home to change my stockings," thought Tommie. "I wonder who that rabbit was?"
And when Tommie reached the party he found that he was not the only little boy who had fallen in a mud puddle. The same thing had happened to Sammie and Johnnie, two other boys.
"But how did you get your stockings so clean, without going home and changing them?" asked the other boys of Tommie.
"Oh, an old rabbit gentleman, with a tall silk hat and a red, white and blue crutch showed me how to scrape off the dried mud with a pine cone," Tommie answered. "I cleaned my white stockings as the bunny brushed his clothes."
"Oh, is that a fairy story?" cried the boys and girls at Alice's party.