UNCLE WIGGILY AND THE MILKMAN

Well, now I guess we’re all ready for the story of the chicken who tried to roll an egg up hill, and it fell down, and was broken into forty-’leven pieces and the monkey—­Oh dear!  Did you ever hear of such a thing?  I guess I must have turned over two pages in the story book instead of one, for to-night I’m going to tell you about Uncle Wiggily and the milkman, and not about the chicken and the egg at all.  That comes in later.

Let’s see then, we left the old gentleman rabbit just after he had met the Phoebe birds, didn’t we?  Well, a few days after that, as Uncle Wiggily was hopping along with the elephant, who had come back to him again, now and then, when he was tired, taking a ride on the back of the big fellow, all of a sudden they heard a voice crying: 

“Ah, ha!  Now I have you!”

“My!  What’s that?” asked the old gentleman rabbit.

“It must be somebody after us,” answered the elephant.  “But don’t you be afraid, Uncle Wiggily, I’ll take care of you, and not let them hurt you.  Just get behind me.”

So the rabbit got behind the big elephant, and, would you believe it? you couldn’t see Uncle Wiggily at all, not even if you were to put on the strongest kind of spectacles, such as Grandma wears.  For he was hidden behind the elephant.

Then, in another moment a man with a long rope came bursting through the bushes, and he ran straight toward the elephant.

“Now I have you!” cried the man again.  “You must come right back to the circus with me.”

“Oh, it’s you they want, and not me,” remarked Uncle Wiggily, and then he wasn’t afraid any more, and felt better, for he knew that he could still travel on and seek his fortune.

“Yes, they’re after me,” said the elephant sadly.  “I guess I’ll have to leave you, Uncle Wiggily.  Do you want me to go with you, Mr. Man?”

“Yes, we want you back in the circus show.”

“Will I have all the peanuts I want?” asked the elephant.

“Oh, yes,” promised the man, “you may have a bushel and a pint every day, besides a pailful of pink lemonade.”

“Then I’ll come,” said the elephant, “though I would like to have Uncle Wiggily come also.  But he still has his fortune to find.  Come and see me some time,” he called to the rabbit.

“I will,” said Uncle Wiggily.  Then the man tied a rope around the elephant’s trunk and led him away, and the big fellow waved and flapped his ears at the rabbit to say good-by.

“Now I must travel all alone once more,” said Uncle Wiggily to himself, as he hopped on through the woods.  “And I do hope I find part of my fortune to-day, even if it’s only ten cents’ worth.”

Well, he was passing across a nice green field a little while after that when, all of a sudden, he heard some voices talking.  He looked all around, but he couldn’t see any one, and he wondered if perhaps there were fairies about.  Then he heard a voice say: