I Love Animal Stories. Aesop

Чтение книги онлайн.

СКАЧАТЬ and kissed him between his long ears, and Billie carried his satchel for him.

      "Oh, we're so glad you are here!" they cried. "Mamma! Papa! Uncle Butter! Here is Uncle Wiggily!"

      Well, the whole goat family was glad to see the rabbit-traveler, and after supper he told them of his adventures, and how he was out seeking his fortune.

      And Billie and Nannie told what they had been doing, and Nannie showed how she could cut things out of paper, like the children do in the kindergarten class in school. She could make little houses, with smoke coming out of the chimney, and paper lanterns, and boxes, and, oh! ever so many things. The lanterns she made were especially fine, just like Chinese ones.

      Then it came time to go to bed, and in the night a very strange thing happened, and I'm going to tell you all about it.

      Along about 12 o'clock, when all was still and quiet, and when the little mice were beginning to think it was time for them to creep, creep out of their holes, and hunt for bread and cheese; about this time there sounded a queer noise down at the front door of the goat-house.

      "Ha! What is that?" asked Mrs. Goat.

      "I guess it was the cats," said Mr. Goat, getting ready to go to sleep again.

      "No, I'm sure it was a burglar-fox!" said the lady goat. "Please get up and look."

      Well, of course, Mr. Goat had to do so, after his wife asked him like that. So he poked his head out of the upstairs window, over the front door, and he called out:

      "Who is down there?"

      "I'm a burglar-fox!" was the answer. "I'm coming to rob you."

      "Oh, my!" cried Mrs. Goat, when she heard that. "Get a gun, and shoot him, Mr. Goat."

      And at that Billie and Nannie began to cry, for they were afraid of burglars, and Uncle Butter got up, and began looking for a whistle, with which to call a policeman dog, but he couldn't find it.

      Then the burglar-fox started in breaking down the door, so that he could get in, and still Mr. Goat couldn't find his gun.

      "Oh, we'll all be killed!" cried Mrs. Goat. "Oh, if some one would only help us!"

      "Ha! I will help you!" cried Uncle Wiggily jumping out of bed. "I'll scare that fox so that he'll run away."

      "But I can't find my gun," said Mr. Goat.

      "No matter," answered the brave rabbit. "I can scare him with a paper lantern such as Nannie can make. Quick, Nannie, make me a big paper lantern."

      Well, the little goat girl stopped crying then, and she got her paper, and her scissors, and the paste pot, and she began to make a paper lantern, as big as a water pail. Uncle Wiggily and Billie helped her. And all the while the burglar-fox was banging on the door, and crying out:

      "Let me in! Let me in!"

      "Quick! is the lantern ready?" Asked Uncle Wiggily, jumping around in a circle like "Ring Around the Rosie."

      "Here it is," said Nannie. So the rabbit gentleman took it, all nicely made as it was, and inside of it he put a hot, blazing candle. And the lantern was so big that the candle didn't burn the sides of the paper.

      Then Uncle Wiggily tied the lantern to a string, and he lowered it right down out of the window; down in front of the burglar-fox, and the hot candle in the lantern burned the fox's nose, and he thought it was a policeman climbing down out of a tree to catch him, and before you could count forty-'leven the bad burglar-fox ran away, and so he didn't rob the goats after all. And, oh! how thankful Nannie and Billie and their papa and mamma were to Uncle Wiggily.

      Now, in case the little boy next door doesn't take our clothes line, to make a swing for his puppy dog, I'll tell you about Uncle Wiggily and the paper house in the following story.

STORY XX

      UNCLE WIGGILY AND THE PAPER HOUSE

       Table of Contents

      Bright and early next morning Uncle Wiggily got up, and he took a careful look around to see if there were any signs of the burglar-fox, about whom I told you in another story.

      "I guess he's far enough off by this time," said Billie Goat, as he polished his horns with a green leaf.

      "Yes, indeed," spoke Uncle Wiggily. "It is a good thing that Nannie knew how to make a paper lantern."

      "Oh, I can make lots of things out of paper," said the little goat girl. "Our teacher in school shows us how. Why I can even make a paper house."

      "Can you, indeed?" asked the old gentleman rabbit, as he washed his paws and face for breakfast. "Now I should dearly like to know how to make a paper house."

      "Why?" asked Billie Goat, curious like.

      "So that when I am traveling about, looking for my fortune, and night comes on, and I have no place to stay, then I could make me a paper house, and be all nice and dry in case it rained," replied the rabbit.

      "Oh, but the water would soon soak through the paper," said Billie. "I know, for once I made a paper boat, and sailed it on the pond, and soon it was soaked through, and sank away down."

      "Oh, but if I use that funny, greasy paper which comes inside cracker boxes—the kind with wax on it—that wouldn't wet through," spoke the rabbit as he went inside the goat-house with the children, for Mrs. Goat had called them in to breakfast.

      "That would be just fine!" exclaimed Nannie, as she passed some apple sauce and oatmeal to Uncle Wiggily. "After breakfast I'll show you how to make a paper house."

      Well, surely enough, as soon as breakfast was over, and before she and Billie had gone to school, Nannie showed the old gentleman rabbit how to make a paper house. You take some paper and some scissors, and you cut out the sides of the house and the roof, and you make windows and doors in these sides, and then you make a chimney, and you fasten them all together, with paste or glue, and, there you are. Isn't it easy?

      And if you only make the paper house large enough, you can get inside of it and have a play party, and perhaps you can make paper dishes and knives and forks; but listen! If you make paper things to eat, like cake or cookies or anything like that, please only make-believe to eat them, for they are bad for the digestion if you really chew them.

      "Well, I think I'll travel along now, and once more seek my fortune," said Uncle Wiggily, when Billie and Nannie were ready to go to school. So Mrs. Goat packed up for the rabbit a nice lunch in his valise, and Nannie gave him some waxed paper, that the rain wouldn't melt, and Billie gave his uncle a pair of scissors, and off Mr. Longears started.

      Well, he traveled on and on, over the fields and through the woods, and across little brooks, and pretty soon it was coming on dark night, and the rabbit gentleman hadn't found his fortune.

      "Now I wonder where I can stay to-night?" thought Uncle Wiggily, as he looked about him. He could see nothing but an old stump, which was not hollow, so he couldn't get inside of it, and the only other thing that happened to be there was a flat stone, and he couldn't get under СКАЧАТЬ