. "But I'm in a great hurry, and
perhaps I made a noise like an owl. Percival, you must come back home to
the Bow Wow house right away."

"Why?" asked Percival, sticking up his two ears so that he could hear
better.

"Because Peetie Bow Wow is very ill with the German measles, and he wants
to see you do some of your funny circus tricks," spoke Dickie. "He thinks
that will make him better."

"Ha! I've no doubt that it will!" exclaimed Uncle Wiggily. "If I were not
traveling about, seeking my fortune, I'd go back with you, Percival. I
love Peetie Bow Wow, and Jackie, too."

"Oh, I'll go," said the grasshopper. "I will play Peetie a funny fiddle
tune, on my left hind leg, and that may make him laugh."

"And Nellie and I will sail through the air, and go off to find some
pretty flowers for him," said Dickie.

So the sparrow boy, the grasshopper and old Percival, the circus dog,
started off together to see poor sick Peetie Bow Wow, leaving Uncle
Wiggily there on the grass.

"Give my love to Peetie!" called the old gentleman rabbit after them,
"and tell him that I'll come and see him as soon as I find my fortune."

Uncle Wiggily felt a little bit sad and lonely when his friends were gone,
but he ate another piece of cherry pie, taking care to get none of the
juice, on his blue necktie, and then he was a little happier.

"Now to start off once more," he said. "I wonder what will happen next?
But I know one thing, I'm never going to do any jumping for any squatty
old toads any more."

So Uncle Wiggily traveled on and on, and when it came night he didn't have
any place to sleep. But as it happened he met a kind old water snake, who
had a nice house in an old pile of wood, and there the rabbit stayed until
morning, when the water snake got him a nice breakfast of pond lilies,
with crinkly eel-grass sauce on.

Pretty soon it was nearly noon that day, and Uncle Wiggily was about to
sit down on a nice green mossy bank in the woods--not a toy bank with
money in it, you understand, but a dirt-bank, with moss on it like a
carpet. That's where he was going to sit.

"I think I'll eat my dinner," said the old gentleman rabbit as he opened
his valise, and just then he heard a voice in the woods singing. And this
was the song:

"Oh dear! I'm lost, I know I am,
I don't know what to do.
I had a big red ribbon, and
I had one colored blue.

But now I haven't got a one
Because a savage bear