I Love Animal Stories. Aesop

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СКАЧАТЬ mine, only hers comes to a point on top. And she has a broom with her. I wonder who it can be?”

      And when the big white bird came nearer to the airship Uncle Wiggily saw that it was not Grandfather Goosey Gander at all, but another big gander, almost like his friend, whom he often went to see. And then the bunny uncle saw who it was on the bird’s back.

      “Why, it’s Mother Goose!” cried Uncle Wiggily Longears. “It’s Mother Goose! She looks just like her pictures in the book, too.”

      “Yes, I am Mother Goose,” said the lady who was riding on the back of the big, white gander.

      “I am glad to meet you, Mother Goose,” spoke Mr. Longears. “I have often heard about you. I can see, over the tree tops, that Nurse Jane Fuzzy Wuzzy, my muskrat lady housekeeper, is getting dinner ready. I can tell by the smoke. Will you not ride home with me? I will make my airship go slowly, so as not to get ahead of you and your fine gander-goose.”

      “Alas, Uncle Wiggily,” said Mother Goose, scratching her chin with the end of the broom handle, “I cannot come home to dinner with you much as I would like it. Alas! Alas!”

      “Why not?” asked the bunny uncle.

      “Because I have bad news for you,” said Mother Goose. “That smoke, which you saw over the tree tops, was not smoke from your chimney as Nurse Jane was getting dinner.”

      “What was it then?” asked Uncle Wiggily, and a cold shiver sort of ran up and down between his ears, even if he did have warm, red mittens on his paws. “What was that smoke?”

      “The smoke from your burning bungalow,” went on Mother Goose. “It caught fire, when Nurse Jane was getting dinner, and now——”

      “Oh! Don’t tell me Nurse Jane is burned!” cried Uncle Wiggily. “Don’t say that!”

      “I was not going to,” spoke Mother Goose, kindly. “But I must tell you that your hollow-stump bungalow is burned to the ground. There is nothing left but some ashes,” and she made the gander, on whose back she was riding, fly close alongside of Uncle Wiggily’s airship.

      “My nice bungalow burned!” exclaimed the rabbit gentleman. “Well, I am very, very sorry for that. But still it might be worse. Nurse Jane might have been hurt, and that would have been quite too bad. I dare say I can get another bungalow.”

      “That is what I came to tell you about,” said Mother Goose. “I was riding past when I saw your Woodland hollow-stump house on fire, and I went down to see if I could help. It was too late to save the bungalow, but I said I would find a place for you and Nurse Jane to stay to-night, or as long as you like, until you can build a new home.”

      “That is very kind of you,” said Uncle Wiggily. “I hardly know what to do.”

      “I have many friends,” went on Mother Goose. “You may have read about them in the book which tells of me. Any of my friends would be glad to have you come and live with them. There is the Old Woman Who Lives in a Shoe, for instance.”

      “But hasn’t she so many children she doesn’t know what to do?” asked Uncle Wiggily, as he remembered the story in the book.

      “Yes,” answered Mother Goose, “she has. I suppose you would not like it there.”

      “Oh, I like children,” said Uncle Wiggily. “But if there are so many that the dear Old Lady doesn’t know what to do, she wouldn’t know what to do with Nurse Jane and me.”

      “Well, you might go stay with my friend Old Mother Hubbard,” said Mother Goose.

      “But if I went there, would not the cupboard be bare?” asked Uncle Wiggily, “and what would Nurse Jane and I do for something to eat?”

      “That’s so,” spoke Mother Goose, as she reached up quite high and brushed a cobweb off the sky with her broom. “That will not do, either. I must see about getting Mother Hubbard and her dog something to eat. You can stay with her later. Oh, I have it!” suddenly cried the lady who was riding on the back of the white gander, “you can go stay with Old King Cole! He’s a jolly old soul!”

      Uncle Wiggily shook his head.

      “Thank you very much, Mother Goose,” he said, slowly. “But Old King Cole might send for his fiddlers three, and I do not believe I would like to listen to jolly music to-day when my nice bungalow has just burned down.”

      “No, perhaps not,” agreed Mother Goose. “Well, if you can find no other place to stay to-night come with me. I have a big house, and with me live Little Bo Peep, Little Boy Blue, who is getting to be quite a big chap now, Little Tommie Tucker and Jack Sprat and his wife. Oh, I have many other friends living with me, and surely we can find room for you.”

      “Thank you,” answered Uncle Wiggily. “I will think about it.”

      Then he flew down in his airship to the place where the hollow-stump bungalow had been, but it was not there now. Mother Goose flew down with her gander after Uncle Wiggily. They saw a pile of blackened and smoking wood, and near it stood Nurse Jane Fuzzy Wuzzy, the muskrat lady, and many other animals who lived in Woodland with Uncle Wiggily.

      “Oh, I am so sorry!” cried Nurse Jane. “It is my fault. I was baking a pudding in the oven, Uncle Wiggily. I left it a minute while I ran over to the pen of Mrs. Wibblewobble, the duck lady, to ask her about making a new kind of carrot sauce for the pudding, and when I came home the pudding had burned, and the bungalow was on fire.”

      “Never mind,” spoke Uncle Wiggily, kindly, “as long as you were not burned yourself, Nurse Jane.”

      “But where will you sleep to-night?” asked the muskrat lady, sorrowfully.

      “Oh,” began Uncle Wiggily, “I guess I can——”

      “Come stay with us!” cried Sammie and Susie Littletail, the rabbit children.

      “Or with us!” invited Johnnie and Billie Bushytail, the squirrels.

      “And why not with us?” asked Nannie and Billie Wagtail, the goat children.

      “We’d ask you to come with us,” said Jollie and Jillie Longtail, the mouse children, “only our house is so small.”

      Many of Uncle Wiggily’s friends, who had hurried up to see the hollow-stump bungalow burn, while he was at the store, now, in turn, invited him to stay with them.

      “I, myself, have asked him to come with me,” said Mother Goose, “or with any of my friends. We all would be glad to have him.”

      “It is very kind of you,” said the rabbit gentleman. “And this is what I will do, until I can build me a new bungalow. I will take turns staying at your different hollow-tree homes, your nests or your burrows underground. And I will come and visit you also, Mother Goose, and all of your friends; at least such of them as have room for me.

      “Yes, that is what I’ll do. I’ll visit around now that my hollow-stump home is burned. I thank you all. Come, Nurse Jane, we will pay our first visit to Sammie and Susie Littletail, the rabbits.”

      And while the other animals hopped, СКАЧАТЬ