But still they were warm again in a short time, and then the elephant said:
"I know what I am going to do. I am going to get some more ice cream cones. They will cool us off better than anything else. I'll go for them and bring back some big ones. You stay here in the shade, Uncle Wiggily, but don't walk on ahead, or you may tumble into the water again."
"I'll not," promised the rabbit. "I'll wait right here for you."
Off the elephant started to get the ice cream cones and pretty soon he came to the store where the man sold them.
"I want two of your very coldest cones," said the elephant to the man, for sometimes, in stories, you know, elephants can talk to people. "I want a big strawberry cone for myself," the elephant went on, "and a smaller one for my friend, Uncle Wiggily, the rabbit."
"Very well," said the man, "but you will have to wait until I make a large cone for you."
So that man took seventeen thousand, six hundred and eighty-seven little cones and made them into one big one for the elephant. Then he took eighteen thousand, two hundred and ninety-one quarts of strawberry ice cream, and an extra pint, and put it into the big cone. Then he made a rabbit-sized ice cream cone for Uncle Wiggily and gave them both to the elephant, who carried them in his trunk so they wouldn't melt.
But I must tell you what was happening to Uncle Wiggily all this while. As he sat there in the shade of the apple tree, thinking, about his fortune and whether he would ever find it, all of a sudden he saw something round and squirming sticking itself toward him through the bushes.
"Ha! the elephant has come back so quietly that I didn't hear him," thought the rabbit. "That is his trunk he is sticking out at me. I guess he thinks I don't see him, and he is going to tickle me. I hope he has those ice cream cones."
Well, the crawly, squirming, round thing, which was like the small end of an elephant's trunk, kept coming closer and closer to the rabbit.