y and the busy bug.

STORY XI

UNCLE WIGGILY AND THE BUSY BUG

Everywhere Uncle Wiggily and the black cricket went in the next few days,
every one was glad to see them. For they were both so jolly, and laughed
and joked so much along the road, that no one who heard them could be sad.

They came to one place where there was a boy sick with the toothache, and
his mamma had done everything for him that she could think of, even to
putting mustard on it, but still that boy's tooth ached.

Well, as soon as that boy saw the cricket and the old gentleman rabbit,
and heard them laugh, why the boy smiled, and then the pain, somehow,
seemed to be better, and he smiled some more, and then he laughed.

Then Uncle Wiggily told a funny story about a monkey who made faces at
himself in a looking-glass, and got so excited about it that he jumped
around behind the glass, thinking another monkey was there, and there
wasn't, and the monkey fell into the freezer full of ice cream and caught
cold because he ate so much of it.

Well, that boy opened his mouth real wide to laugh at the funny story and
his mamma all of a sudden slipped a string around the aching tooth and she
pulled it out in a moment, and it never ached again.

"Oh, how glad I am!" cried the little boy. "I wish you would always stay
with me, Uncle Wiggily--you and the jolly cricket."

"I'd like to, but I can't," said the old gentleman rabbit. "I must keep on
after my fortune."

"I'll stay with you for a little while," said the cricket, and he did,
telling some funny stories to other boys who had the toothache, and right
away after that they allowed their bad teeth to be pulled, and their pain
was over.

So Uncle Wiggily said good-by to the cricket and went on by himself. He
was feeling very good now, for he and the cricket had met a kind muskrat,
a thirty-fifth cousin to Nurse Jane Fuzzy-Wuzzy, and this muskrat gave
Uncle Wiggily a lot of sandwiches for his satchel, so he wouldn't be
hungry again for some time.

"And I don't mind so much about the cent, either," thought the rabbit, as
he remembered the one that belonged to the chipmunk. "After all a cent is
not so much, and I need more than that for my fortune. Ha! Ha! Ho! Ho!"

He just had to laugh, you see, when he thought of the jolly cricket. So he
traveled on and on, over hill and dale, until one evening, just as the sun
was going down behind the clouds, all red and golden and violet colored,
he saw