One day Charlie and Arabella Chick, the little rooster and hen children of Mrs. Cluck-Cluck, the hen lady, came fluttering over to Uncle Wiggily's hollow stump bungalow. "Oh, Uncle Wiggily!" cackled Arabella. "What you think has happened?"
"Well, I hardly am able to guess," answered the bunny gentleman. "I do hope, though, that your coop isn't on fire. You seem much excited, my dears!"
"Well, I guess you'd be excited, too, if a boy threw stones at you!" crowed Charlie. "Wouldn't you?"
"Indeed I would," admitted Uncle Wiggily. "Once a boy did stone me and I didn't like it at all."
"We don't like it either," cawed Arabella.
"Isn't there some way you can stop that boy from throwing sticks and stones at us?" Charlie wanted to know.
"Tell me about it," suggested Uncle Wiggily.
"Well, it's this way," began Arabella. "This boy lives on the other side of the Big Forest. Sometimes Charlie and I go over there to pick up beechnuts and other good things to eat, and every time that boy sees us he pegs things at us! Wouldn't you call him a bad boy, Uncle Wiggily?"
[Pg 131] "Most surely I would," answered the rabbit gentleman. "But why does he do it? You don't crow over him; do you, Charlie?"
"No, indeed," answered the rooster boy. "I only crow to warn Arabella when I see that fellow coming, to tell her to run and hide under a bush."
"And I don't pick him, or scratch gravel at him or anything like that," cackled the little hen girl. "I wish he'd let us alone, Uncle Wiggily."
"We came over to see if you could think up a way to make him stop," crowed Charlie. "Can you?"
"Hum! I'll try," promised the bunny gentleman, twinkling his pink nose like the frosting on top of an orange shortcake. "Suppose we go look for this boy," went on Uncle Wiggily. "So I'll know him when I see him."
"I can show you his house," offered Charlie. "But we'll have to be careful. For if he sees us he'll peg things at us."
"Let us hope not," murmured Uncle Wiggily.
But it was a vain hope, as they say in fairy books. For after Uncle Wiggily, Charlie and Arabella had gone to the other side of a forest, there, all of a sudden, they saw the boy.
"Hi! There are those funny dressed-up chickens!" shouted the boy, who had red hair, and a face full of freckles. "And there's a rabbit with them, all dressed up in a tall silk hat! Oh, my! What style! I'm going to see if I can knock his hat off with a stone! I'm going to peg rocks at 'em!"
"See! What did I tell you?" cackled Arabella, who could understand boy-talk, as could also Charlie and Uncle Wiggily.
[Pg 132] "Bang!" bounced a stone on Uncle Wiggily's tall silk hat, sending it spinning through the air.
"Ha! Ha!" laughed the boy, as he picked up another stone. "I'm a good shot, I am!"
"I should call that rather a bad shot—for my hat," remarked Uncle Wiggily, as he picked up his silk hat and hopped toward the bushes. "Come on, Arabella and Charlie!" called the bunny gentleman. "This boy is acting just as you said he did. I must think up some way of teaching him a lesson!"
The little hen girl and rooster boy scooted under the bushes, and only just in time, for the boy threw many more stones, and one struck Charlie on the comb. Not the comb that he used to make his feathers smooth, but the red comb on his head—one of his ornaments; his tail feathers being others.
"Hi, fellows! Come on chase the funny chickens and the dressed-up rabbit!" cried the boy. But though some of his chums ran up, as he called, with sticks and stones, Uncle Wiggily, with Charlie and Arabella, managed to hide away from the thoughtless lads. For they were thoughtless. They didn't think that stones hurt animals.
"Yes, I certainly must teach that boy a lesson," said Uncle Wiggily.
"I—I wish he'd catch the chicken-pox!" crowed Charlie. "Or maybe the roosterpox! The............