"Very well," spoke Uncle Wiggily politely, "you shall have all three, and I'll get myself a new pair of boots."
It did not take the bunny rabbit gentleman long to hop to the shop of the Monkey Doodle shoemaker, where Mr. Longears bought himself a new pair of rubber boots.
"As for those old ones," said the Monkey chap, "I can mend them for you, so they will do to wear many times yet."
"Please do so," begged the bunny. And when his old boots were mended he carried them over his shoulder with the new ones, for he was wearing his shoes. Along he hopped to the seven and eight cent store.
Uncle Wiggily bought the needles, thread, white flannel and red yarn for the rabbit children's mittens, and he was hopping back to his hollow stump bungalow, when, all of a sudden, coming from behind a sassafras bush, he heard a voice saying:
"Oh, dear! How sad! Now I suppose they'll take me out of all the story books, and the children will never love me any more!"
"Hum! This is strange," said Uncle Wiggily to himself. "I wonder who it is that can't be in the story books any more? That is very sad! I wouldn't want them to put me out of all the Bedtime Story Books in which I have my adventures."
So the bunny gentleman looked around the corner of a lollypop bush, and there he saw a cat, dressed in a coat, trousers and cap, but without anything on his hind paws, sitting on a stump.
"Good afternoon, Mr. Cat!" politely greeted Uncle Wiggily. "You seem to be in trouble."