Uncle Wiggily's Story Book. Howard R. Garis

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      Story III. Uncle Wiggily and the Mud Puddle

      Did you ever fall down in a mud puddle? Perhaps this may have happened to you when you were barefooted, with old clothes on, so that it did not much matter whether you splashed them or not.

      But that isn’t what I mean.

      Did you ever fall into a mud puddle when you had on your very best clothes, with white stockings that showed every speck of mud? If anything like that ever happened to you, when you were going to Sunday-school, or to a little afternoon tea party, why, you know how dreadfully unhappy you felt! To say nothing of the pain in your knees!

      Well, now for a story of how a little boy named Tommie fell in a mud puddle, and how Uncle Wiggily helped him scrub the mud off his white stockings—off Tommie’s white stockings I mean, not Uncle Wiggily’s.

      Tommie was a little boy who lived in a house on the edge of the wood, near where Uncle Wiggily had built his hollow stump bungalow. No, Tommie wasn’t the same little boy who had the toothache. He was quite a different chap.

      One day the postman rang the bell at Tommie’s house, and gave Tommie a cute little letter.

      “Oh, it’s for me!” cried Tommie. “Look, Mother! I have a letter!”

      “That’s nice,” said Mother. “Who sent it to you?”

      “I’ll look and tell you,” answered the little boy. The writing in the letter was large and plain, and though Tommie had not been to school very long he could read a little. So he was able to tell that the letter was from a little girl named Alice, who wanted him to come to a party she was going to have one afternoon a few days later.

      “Oh, may I go?” Tommie asked his mother.

      “Yes,” she answered.

      “And wear my best clothes?”

      “Surely you will put on your best clothes to go to the party,” said Mother. “And I hope you have a nice time!”

      Tommie hoped so, too. But if only he had known what was going to happen! Perhaps it is just as well he did not, for it would have spoiled his fun of thinking about the coming party. And half the fun of nearly everything, you know, is thinking about it beforehand, or afterward.

      At last the day came for the tea party Alice was to give at her home, which was a little distance down the street from Tommie’s house.

      “Oh, how happy I am!” sang Tommie, as he ran about the porch.

      But when, after breakfast, it began to rain, Tommie was not so happy. He stood with his nose pressed against the glass of the window until it was pressed quite flat. I mean his nose was flat, for the glass was that way anyhow, you know. And Tommie watched the rain drops splash down, making little mud puddles in the street.

      “Can’t I go to Alice’s party if it rains?” asked Tommie.

      “Well, no, I think not,” Mother answered. “But perhaps it will stop raining before it is time for you to go. You don’t have to leave here until after lunch.”

      Tommie turned again to press his nose against the glass, glad that the rain was outside, so that the drops which rolled down the window could not wet his face. And he hoped the clouds would clear away and that the sun would shine before the time for the party.

      Now about this same hour Uncle Wiggily Longears, the bunny rabbit gentleman, was also looking out of the window of his hollow stump bungalow in the woods, wondering, just as Tommie wondered, whether the rain would stop.

      “But surely you won’t go out while it is still raining,” said Nurse Jane Fuzzy Wuzzy, the muskrat lady housekeeper.

      “No,” answered Uncle Wiggily, “my going out is not so needful as all that. I was going to look for an adventure, and I had rather do that in the sunshine than in the rain. I can wait.”

      And then, almost as suddenly as it had started, the rain stopped.

      “Oh, I’m so glad!” sang Tommie, as he danced up and down. “Now I can go to the party!”

      “And I can go adventuring,” said Uncle Wiggily. Now of course he did not hear Tommie, nor did the little boy hear the bunny. But, all the same, they were to have an adventure together.

      Tommie had been ready, for some time, to start down the street to go to the party Alice was giving for her little girl and boy friends. All that Tommie needed, now, was to have his collar and tie put on, and his hair combed again, for it had become rather tossed and twisted topsy-turvy when he pressed his head against the window, watching the rain.

      “Be careful of mud puddles!” Tommie’s mother called to him, as, all spick and span, he started down the street toward the home of Alice, a block or so distant. “Don’t fall in any puddles!”

      “I’ll be careful,” Tommie promised.

      And as Uncle Wiggily started out about this same time for his adventure, Nurse Jane called to the bunny:

      “Be careful not to get wet on account of your rheumatism.”

      “I’ll be careful,” promised Uncle Wiggily, just as Tommie had done.

      Now everything would have been all right if Tommie had not stubbed his toe as he was going along the street, about half way to the party. But he did stumble, where one sidewalk stone was raised up higher than another, and, before he could save himself, down in the mud puddle fell poor Tommie! He fell on his hands and knees, and they were both soaked in the muddy water of the puddle on the sidewalk.

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