with his handkerchief. "I am as hot as an oven."

"I can soon fix that part of it," said the elephant. And pretty soon he
came to a spring of cold water, and he sucked a lot of it up in his hollow
trunk, and then he squirted a nice cool, fine spray of it over the rabbit,
just as if it came out of a hose with which papa waters the garden or
lawn.

"My! That feels fine!" said the rabbit. Then the elephant squirted some
water on himself, and they went on, feeling much better.

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.

[Illustration]

"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 an