"What's that?" asked Uncle Wiggily in a whisper.

"I don't know. Maybe a burglar fox," answered the porcupine also, in a whisper. "But I'm all ready for him."

So he got out some of his sharpest stickery quills to jab into the burglar fox, and the noise still kept up:

"Cheep! Cheep! Yip! Yip! Yap! Yap! Cheep-chap!"

"That doesn't sound like a fox," said the rabbit, listening with his two ears.

"No, it doesn't," admitted the porcupine, and he stuck his quills back again like pins in a cushion. "Perhaps it is the skillery-scalery alligator, and my quills would be of no use against him," he went on.

Then, all at once, before Uncle Wiggily could make his nose twinkle like a star of a frosty night more than two times, there was a rustling in the bushes, and out popped a poor, little white chickie--only she wasn't so very white now, for her feathers were all wet and muddy.

"Cheep-chap! Yip-yap!" cried the little chickie.

"Why, what in the world are you doing away off here?" asked Uncle Wiggily. "You poor little dear! Where is your mother?"

"Oh, me! Oh, my!" cried the little chickie. "I only wish I knew. I'm lost!

I wandered away from my mamma, and my brothers, and sisters, and I'm lost in these woods. Oh chip! Oh chap! Oh yip! Oh yap!" Then she cried real hard and the tears washed some of the dirt off her white feathers.

"Don't cry," said Uncle Wiggily, kindly. "We'll help you find your mamma, won't we, Mr. Porcupine?"

"Of course we will," said the stickery-stockery creature. "You go one way, Uncle Wiggily, and I'll go the other, and the chickie can stay on this big rock until one of us comes back with her mamma."

"Yes, and here is a piece of cherry pie for you to eat while we are gone,"

said the rabbit, giving the lost chickie a nice piece of the pie.

So off the rabbit and the porcupine started to find the chickie's mamma.

They looked everywhere for her, but the porcupine couldn't find the old lady hen, so he went back to the rock to wait there with the lost chickie so she wouldn't be lonesome. But Uncle Wiggily wouldn't stop looking.

Pretty soon he heard something going "cluck-cluck" in the bushes, and he knew that it was the mamma hen. Then he went up to her and said:

"Oh, I know where your little lost chickie is."

Well, at first, that mamma hen didn't know who the rabbit was, and she ruffled up her feathers, and puffed them out, and let down her wings, and she was going to fly right at Uncle Wiggily, but she happened to see who he was just in time and she said:

"Oh, thank you ever so much, Uncle Wiggily. I was so worried that I was just going down to the police station to see if a policeman had found her.

Now I won't have to go. Come along, children, little lost Clarabella is found. Uncle Wiggily found her."

So she clucked to all the other children, and the rabbit led them toward where Clarabella was sitting on the rock with the porcupine.

And on the way a big, ugly fox leaped out of the bushes and tried to eat up all the chickens, and Uncle Wiggily also. But the old mother hen just ruffled up her feathers and puffed herself all out big again, and she flew at that fox and picked him in the eyes, and he was glad enough to slink away through the bushes, taking his fuzzy tail with him.

Then the rabbit hopped on and took the mamma hen to her little lost chickie on the rock, and the rabbit and the porcupine had supper that night with the chicken family and slept in a big basket full of straw next door to the chicken coop.

Then they traveled on the next day and something else happened. What it was I'll tell you right soon, when, in case a little boy named Willie doesn't crawl up in my lap when I'm writing and pull my ears, as the conductor does the trolley car bell-rope, the story will be about Uncle Wiggily and the wasp.

STORY XXV

UNCLE WIGGILY AND THE WASP

"What would you like for breakfast this morning?" asked Mrs. Hen, as Uncle Wiggily and the porcupine got up out of their bed in the clean straw by the chickens' coop. This was the day after the rabbit found the little white chickie.

"Ha, hum! Let me see," exclaimed the rabbit, as he waved his whiskers around in the air to get all the straw seeds out of them: "what would I like? Why, I think some fried oranges with carrot gravy on them would be nice, don't you, Mr. Porcupine?"

"No," said the stickery-stockery creature. "I think I would like to have some bread with banana b.u.t.ter on and a gla.s.s of milk with vanilla flavoring."

"You may both have what you like, because you were so kind to my little lost Clarabella," said Mrs. Hen. Then she spoke to her children.

"Scurry around now, little ones, and get Uncle Wiggily and his friend the nice things for breakfast. Hurry now, for they will be wanting to travel on before the sun gets too hot," the mamma hen said.

So one little chickie got the oranges, and another chickie got the bananas, and still another chickery-chicken, with a spotted tail, got the carrots, and then Clarabella went to where Mrs. Cow lived, and got the milk for the p.r.i.c.kly porcupine. Then Mrs. Hen cooked the breakfast, and very good it was, too, if I may be allowed to say so.

"Well, I guess we'll be getting along now," said Uncle Wiggily. "Are you still going to travel with me, Mr. Porcupine?"

"Oh, yes, I'll come with you for a couple days more, and then if you don't find your fortune I'll start out by myself, and perhaps I can find it for you."

So the two friends went on together. They traveled over hills and down dales, and once they met a lame rabbit, who had the epizootic very bad.

Uncle Wiggily showed him how to make a crutch out of a cornstalk, just as Nurse Jane Fuzzy-Wuzzy, the muskrat, had done, and the lame rabbit made himself one and was much obliged.

Then, a little later they met a duck with only one good leg, and the other one was made of wood, and this duck wanted to get over a fence but she couldn't, on account of her wooden leg.

"Pray, how did you lose your leg?" asked Uncle Wiggily, as he and the porcupine kindly helped her over the rails.

"Oh, a bad rat bit it off," said the duck. "I was asleep in the pond one morning and before I knew it a rat swam up under water, and nipped off my leg."

"Oh, I'm so sorry," said the rabbit. "I'll tell Alice and Lulu and Jimmie Wibblewobble, my duck friends, to be careful of bad rats in their pond."

"That's a good idea," spoke the duck with the wooden leg, and then she said good-by and waddled away.

After that Uncle Wiggily and the porcupine traveled on some more, and, as it got to be very warm they thought they would lie down in a shady place and take a little sleep.

Well, they picked out a nice place under a clump of ferns, that leaned over a little babbling brook, and touched the tips of their green leaves into the cool water. And, before he knew it, dear old Uncle Wiggily was fast, fast asleep, and he snored the least little bit, but please don't tell any one about it.

Then pretty soon the porcupine was asleep too, only he didn't snore any, though I'm not allowed to tell you why just now. I may later, however.

Well, in a little while, something is going to happen. In fact, it's now time for it to begin. Yes, here comes the stingery wasp. Listen, and you can hear him buzz.

"Buzz! Buzz! Bizzy-buzzy-buzzy!" went the stingery wasp, as he flew over the place where the rabbit and porcupine were sleeping. And the wasp flitted and flapped his bluish wings and lifted up the sharp end of his body where be carries his stingery-sting.

"Ah, ha! I see something to sting!" thought the wasp. "Now, I wonder which one I shall sting first? I think I will try the porcupine, and then I will sting the rabbit." Oh, but he was a bad wasp, though; wasn't he, eh?

Well, he was all ready to sting the porcupine, when suddenly the wasp heard a voice calling to him from the bushes.

"Don't sting the porcupine, Mr. Wasp, sting the rabbit," said the rasping voice.