Uncle Wiggily and
The Puppy

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

"Oh, Uncle Wiggily! Oh, Uncle Wiggily! Oh, Uncle Wiggily!" called Jackie and Peetie Bow Wow, the two doggie boys, as they ran barking up to the hollow stump bungalow one morning.

"Well, well! What's the matter now?" asked Uncle Wiggily Longears, the rabbit gentleman, as he came out on the porch.

"Oh, we've got a baby over at our house!" cried Jackie.

"Come and see it!" barked Peetie.

"A baby? At your house?" exclaimed Uncle Wiggily.

"Well, a little puppy dog," said Jackie. "That's the same to us as a real baby is to real persons."

"To be sure," agreed the bunny uncle. "I'll come over and see the new baby puppy," and putting on his tall silk hat, and taking down his red-white-and-blue-striped barber pole rheumatism crutch from the electric light, Mr. Longears started away over the fields to the kennel house, where the Bow Wow dog family lived.

"There's the new baby puppy!" cried Jackie, as he poked away the straw from the bed where something was moving about.

"I—why, bless my spectacles—I can hardly see him!" said Uncle Wiggily, taking off his glasses to polish them, for he thought maybe he had splashed some carrot oatmeal on them at breakfast and that they were clouded over.

"He's so small, that's why you can't see him," spoke Peetie. "But he'll soon grow big like us, Uncle Wiggily."

"Let us hope so," spoke the bunny uncle. "He's so small now I'd be afraid of stepping on him if I lived here."

"He's got awful cute eyes," said Peetie. "They aren't open yet, but I can pull 'em apart a little bit to show you they're going to be blue color, I guess," and Peetie began opening the shut eyes of his little baby brother puppy. Of course, the puppy whined and Mrs. Bow Wow called:

"Now, what are you boys doing to that baby?"

"Nothing, ma," answered Jackie.

"We're jest pokin' open his eyes so Uncle Wiggily can see 'em," answered Peetie.

"Oh, you doggie boys!" cried Mrs. Bow Wow. "You mustn't do that! I'm glad Uncle Wiggily came to see our baby, but now you run out and play, Peetie and Jackie, while I visit with Mr. Longears."

So the doggie boys ran out to play with Johnnie and Billie Bushytail, the squirrels, and Mrs. Bow Wow told Uncle Wiggily what a nice baby Wuff-Wuff was. Wuff-Wuff was the new puppy's name.

"I'm sure he'll grow up to be a fine dog," said the bunny. Just then the telephone bell in the kennel house rang, and when Mrs. Bow Wow answered she said, after listening awhile:

"Oh, dear! This is your friend Nurse Jane Fuzzy Wuzzy talking to me. She wants me to come over to show her how to make a strawberry longcake, as there is a lot of company coming for supper. A short cake won't be large enough."

"Are you going to my hollow stump bungalow?" asked Uncle Wiggily.

"I'd like to, only I can't leave Baby Wuff Wuff," said Mrs. Bow Wow.

"Oh, I'll stay and take care of him," said the bunny uncle. "I think I can do it, and it may be an adventure for me. Trot along, Mrs. Bow Wow."

"Very well, I will. If Wuff Wuff gets hungry, just give him some milk from this bottle," and she handed a nursing one to Uncle Wiggily. So Mrs. Bow Wow went over to help Nurse Jane, the muskrat lady housekeeper, make the longcake, and the bunny man stayed with the puppy baby.

Uncle Wiggily sat in the kennel house, while the little doggie nestled in the straw. The bunny rabbit was just wondering who the company could be that were coming to his bungalow, when, all of a sudden, there was a big noise outside the kennel, and a big voice cried:

"Now I know you're in there, Uncle Wiggily, for I saw you hop in with Jackie and Peetie. And I know they're gone, for I saw them go out. And I know Mrs. Bow Wow is out. So you're there all alone and I'm going to get you!" And Uncle Wiggily saw the big skillery-scalery alligator standing outside the door.

"Oh, my!" thought the bunny rabbit gentleman. "He'll surely get me this time, for he can knock the kennel house apart with one flip-flap of his double-jointed tail. But maybe, if I keep real still, he will think I'm gone."

So Uncle Wiggily snuggled down in the straw with the baby puppy, but the alligator cried:

"Oh, I know you're there, and I'm going to get you!"

"Oh, if only this puppy was a big, strong dog, like Nero!" thought Uncle Wiggily, "he could save me from the alligator." Just then the puppy began to whine, and the bunny rabbit said:

"Oh, don't do that, Wuff Wuff! Don't whine, and make a noise, or the alligator will get you, too."

But the puppy baby still whined, for he was hungry. Uncle Wiggily picked up a bottle and put the end of it in Wuff Wuff's mouth.

"Here, drink that," said the bunny. "Then you won't be hungry." The puppy baby did so, and then something very strange happened. The little puppy suddenly began growing very large. First he was the size of Mr. Bow Wow, and then he swelled up until he was as big as a horse, and had to get out of the kennel house for fear of bursting off the roof.

And when the alligator saw the great big puppy dog, like the one in Alice of Wonderland, suddenly standing in front of him, Mr. 'Gator just gave one flip of his tail, and away he ran crying:

"Oh, my! I didn't know an elephant was there to save Uncle Wiggily!"

But there wasn't. It was only the puppy who had suddenly grown big. For by mistake instead of giving him the bottle of milk, the bunny rabbit gave him some of the water from the magical red-stoppered, big-growing bottle that Alice from Wonderland had sent the bunny. It had been mended after the croquet ball broke it. And, after the puppy had scared away the alligator, Uncle Wiggily gave Wuff Wuff some water from the magical blue-stoppered bottle and shrunk him to his regular baby size, and everybody was happy.

And if the fairy tale doesn't waggle itself all around the book case and scare all the big words out of the dictionary, I'll tell you next about Uncle Wiggily and the Unicorn.