"Uncle Wiggily! Oh, Uncle Wiggily!" called a voice after the rabbit gentleman, as he was hopping away from his hollow stump bungalow one morning.
"What's the matter now?" inquired the bunny, turning around so quickly that his tall silk hat nearly slipped down over his pink, twinkling nose. "Does the Woozie Wolf or the Fuzzy Fox wish to nibble my ears?"
"I hope not!" exclaimed Nurse Jane, the muskrat lady housekeeper, for she it was who had called. "But will you please take my scissors with you, Uncle Wiggily?"
"Take your scissors? What for?" asked Mr. Longears.
"To have them sharpened," answered Miss Fuzzy Wuzzy. "They are so dull I can hardly cut anything, and I want to cut some linen up into new sheets and pillow cases. Take my scissors along with you, Wiggy dear, and have them made good and sharp."
"I will," promised the bunny rabbit gentleman. Then, wrapping the dull scissors in a grape-vine leaf, Uncle Wiggily put them in the top of his tall silk hat, and set the hat on his head.
"Why do you put them there?" asked Nurse Jane.
"So I'll remember them," the rabbit gentleman answered. "If I put them in my pocket I'd forget them. But now, if I meet Mrs. Twistytail, the pig lady, or Mrs. Wibblewobble, the duck lady,[Pg 211] and bow to them, I'll take off my hat. Out will slide the scissors, and then I'll remember that I am to get them sharpened."
"That's a good idea," said Nurse Jane. "Now don't forget to bring them back to me good and sharp. If you don't I can't cut up into sheets and pillow cases the new linen I have bought."
"I'll not forget," promised the bunny gentleman.
He hopped on and on through the woods, and he had not gone very far before, all of a sudden, he heard a growling, rumbling-umbling noise, a little like far-off thunder.
"I wonder if that can be the lion again?" thought Uncle Wiggily. "Perhaps he couldn't find the circus and he has come back to dust more furniture for Nurse Jane with the end of his tail stuck through a window in the bungalow."
Uncle Wiggily looked through the forest, but he saw no tawny lion. Instead he saw, limping toward him, a beast almost as big as the lion, but with a beautiful black and yellow striped coat.
"Oh, ho! Mr. Tiger—the one I saw when I went to the circus with Baby Bunty!" exclaimed Uncle Wiggily. "This is a tiger!"
"Yes, I am the striped tiger," answered the other animal. "And, oh, what trouble I am in!"
"What is the matter?" kindly asked the rabbit gentleman, for he could see that the tiger was limping and in pain.
"I ran a thorn in my foot," went on the black and yellow fellow, "and my eyes are so poor I can't see to pull it out."
"Perhaps I can," Uncle Wiggily said. "I have strong glasses."
[Pg 212] So the bunny gentleman looked through his spectacles, and soon saw the thorn that was in the tiger's foot. It did not take Uncle Wiggily long to pull it out.
"Oh, thank you, so much!" growled the tiger, though not in a cross voice. "It serves me right, I suppose, for having run away from the circus."
"Did you run away, too, as the lion did?" asked Uncle Wiggily.
"Yes," answered the striped beast, "we ran away together—the lion, some other animals and myself. But now I'd be glad to run back again."
"The l............