STORY VI

UNCLE WIGGILY AT THE PARTY

Well, when Uncle Wiggily Longears found that the elephant wouldn't get off
his trunk--oh, listen to me! What I meant to say was, that when Uncle
Wiggily saw those two boys running off with Fido Flip-Flop, the little
trick dog, as I told you about in the story before this, the old gentleman
rabbit was so surprised at first that he didn't know what to do.

"Won't you please come back with that little doggie?" begged Uncle
Wiggily, but the bad boys kept right on. I guess they knew how smart Fido
was, and they wanted to get up a show with him. Anyhow, they kept on
running through the woods, holding him tightly in their arms.

"Oh, dear! This is terrible!" exclaimed Uncle Wiggily. "I'll never get any
good fortune if Fido has such bad luck. And it was partly my fault, too,
for if we hadn't been doing tricks, we would have heard these boys coming,
and could have run away. Well, now I must save Fido."

So Uncle Wiggily sat down on a stump, and thought, and thought, and
thought of all the plans he could think of, to save the doggie from the
two boys, and at last he decided the only way to do was to scare them.

"Then they'll drop Fido, and run away," said the old gentleman rabbit.
"Let me see, how can I scare them? I know, I'll make believe I'm a tiger!"

So what did that brave Uncle Wiggily do? but go to a mud hole, and with
his crutch dipped into the mud, he made himself all striped over like a
tiger that you see in a circus. Oh, he was a most ferocious sight when he
finished decorating himself! Then he hid his satchel in the bushes, and he
started off on a short cut through the woods, to get ahead of the boys.
Faster and faster through the woods went Uncle Wiggily, and he looked so
peculiarly terrifying that all the animals who saw him were scared out of
their wits, and one old blue-jay bird was so frightened that he wiggled
his tail up and down, and hid his head in a hollow tree.

Well, by and by, after a while, Uncle Wiggily got to a place in the woods
where he knew those boys, with Fido Flip-Flop, would soon come by. Then
the rabbit hid himself in the bushes, so that his long ears wouldn't show.
For he knew that if the boys saw them, they would know right away he
wasn't a tiger, no matter if he was striped like one.

In a few minutes along came the boys, and they were talking about what
they were going to do to Fido, and how they would put him in a cage, and
make him do