kindly. "We'll help you find your mamma,
won't we, Mr. Porcupine?"

"Of course we will," said the stickery-stockery creature. "You go one way,
Uncle Wiggily, and I'll go the other, and the chickie can stay on this big
rock until one of us comes back with her mamma."

"Yes, and here is a piece of cherry pie for you to eat while we are gone,"
said the rabbit, giving the lost chickie a nice piece of the pie.

So off the rabbit and the porcupine started to find the chickie's mamma.
They looked everywhere for her, but the porcupine couldn't find the old
lady hen, so he went back to the rock to wait there with the lost chickie
so she wouldn't be lonesome. But Uncle Wiggily wouldn't stop looking.
Pretty soon he heard something going "cluck-cluck" in the bushes, and he
knew that it was the mamma hen. Then he went up to her and said:

"Oh, I know where your little lost chickie is."

Well, at first, that mamma hen didn't know who the rabbit was, and she
ruffled up her feathers, and puffed them out, and let down her wings, and
she was going to fly right at Uncle Wiggily, but she happened to see who
he was just in time and she said:

"Oh, thank you ever so much, Uncle Wiggily. I was so worried that I was
just going down to the police station to see if a policeman had found her.
Now I won't have to go. Come along, children, little lost Clarabella is
found. Uncle Wiggily found her."

So she clucked to all the other children, and the rabbit led them toward
where Clarabella was sitting on the rock with the porcupine.

And on the way a big, ugly fox leaped out of the bushes and tried to eat
up all the chickens, and Uncle Wiggily also. But the old mother hen just
ruffled up her feathers and puffed herself all out big again, and she flew
at that fox and picked him in the eyes, and he was glad enough to slink
away through the bushes, taking his fuzzy tail with him.

Then the rabbit hopped on and took the mamma hen to her little lost
chickie on the rock, and the rabbit and the porcupine had supper that
night with the chicken family and slept in a big basket full of straw next
door to the chicken coop.

Then they traveled on the next day and something else happened. What it
was I'll tell you right soon, when, in case a little boy named Willie
doesn't crawl up in my lap when I'm writing and pull my ears, as the
conductor does the trolley car bell-rope, the story will be about Uncle
Wiggily and the wasp.

STORY XXV

UNCLE W