Uncle Wiggily Longears, the old gentleman rabbit, walked out in front of his burrow house one morning, and looked at his new airship. He limped a little, for you know he had had a fall the day before, tumbling down almost out of the clouds. But he fell on some sofa cushions, that the monkey gentleman had put in the clothes basket part of the airship, so Mr. Longears was not much hurt—only his rheumatism was sort of twisted.
I guess I told you, did I not, how Uncle Wiggily made himself an airship out of some toy balloons, a clothes basket, and an electric fan? He thought he would fly through the air for a while, instead of riding around in his automobile.
But Mother Goose had accidentally dropped a lot of pins on the toy balloons that lifted up the airship, and when the balloons burst, with loud “pops,” the airship came down “ker-floppo!”—if you will kindly excuse me for saying so.
So Uncle Wiggily walked out in front of his burrow, or underground house, and looked at his broken airship.
“I’m afraid it will never sail again!” said Uncle Wiggily, sadly, as he noticed the burst balloons and the clothes basket, which had quite a dent in one of the handles. The electric fan was not hurt at all, I am glad to say, only it had stopped whizzing around, of course.
“It’s too bad!” Uncle Wiggily went on. “My nice airship, that I thought would take me sailing all over, is broken. I can’t go riding in it again.”
“What!” cried Nurse Jane Fuzzy Wuzzy, the muskrat lady, who kept house for the rabbit gentleman. “You don’t mean to tell me that you would ever go sailing again in an airship, after what happened; would you?”
“I certainly would,” answered Uncle Wiggily, as he combed out his whiskers with a shoestring. “I would love to go airshipping again.”
“Well, well!” cried Nurse Jane. “This is worse than dancing the clam chowder clip! I am certainly surprised at you.”
“But you don’t need to worry,” said Uncle Wiggily. “My airship is broken, so there is not much danger of me going sailing again.”
“I am glad of it,” said Nurse Jane, “for your sake.”
“Oh, ho!” exclaimed a voice from behind the ice cream freezer, “something broken, eh? Well, perhaps I can fix it,” and out stepped Dr. Possum, with his satchel of red, white and blue pills. “What is broken?” he asked. “Anybody’s legs or arms?”
“My airship,” replied Uncle Wiggily. “The balloons that lift it up into the air are all burst from Mother Goose’s pins.”
“Ha! Buy new balloons!” cried Dr. Possum. “That’s easy!”
“The very thing!” exclaimed Uncle Wiggily. “I never thought of that. But the clothes basket has a dent in it.”
“Oh, as to that, I can easily fix the dent,” said Dr. Possum. “I am used to fixing dents. I can do harder things than that. You go get some more new toy balloons, and I’ll fix the basket. You shall have your airship again.”
“Oh, dear me and some molasses pancakes!” cried Nurse Jane. “I can see a lot more trouble ahead for Uncle Wiggily if he is going around in an airship. I had better buy some court-plaster at the five and six cent store, for he will need it. He is sure to fall again, and get all cut and bruised.”
So Nurse Jane kindly went to the store for the court-plaster. Dr. Possum mended the dent in the clothes basket, and Uncle Wiggily went after the toy balloons. He got some red, green, yellow and sky-blue-pink ones, and soon his airship was made over as good as ever again.
“Now watch me sail in it!” the rabbit gentleman cried, as he got into the clothes basket, to which the balloons and electric fan were fastened. “I’m going away up to the clouds this time.”
“Well, I only hope you don’t fall,” said Nurse Jane, sort of anxious like.
“I’ve got the soft sofa cushions under me, if I do,” answered Uncle Wiggily, with a laugh.
Up he went, high in the air, the electric fan going whizzie-izzie, and the balloons lifting the clothes basket off the ground.
Well, Uncle Wiggily in his airship, sailed on and on, and pretty soon, all of a sudden, quick-like, it began to hail. There was a hard hail storm. And hail, you know, is frozen rain. Down pelted the round hail stones on Uncle Wiggily and his airship.
“Oh, me! Oh, my, and some lolly-pops!” cried Uncle Wiggily. “I think something is going to happen.” And just then a hail stone hit on the end of his twinkling nose, making him sneeze—“ker-cher! Ker-choo!”
Then something else happened. More hail stones came down, and “Pop! Pop! Pop!” went the toy balloons, bursting one after another, as the hard hail hit them, just as when the Mother Goose pins had pricked them.
“Oh, dear! I’m going to fall again!” cried the rabbit gentleman, for he knew when the balloons burst there would be nothing to hold him and his clothesbasket airship up above the earth.
And, surely enough, he began to fall. Down and down he went, with the hail falling all around him.
“My! I hope the sofa cushions don’t fall out of my clothes basket!” thought the rabbit gentleman, “for if they do I will get a very hard bump.”
But, as it happened, he did not need the soft cushions, for, all of a sudden, his airship turned over, and he fell into a tree, spilling right out, and landing in the branches. Luckily, there were green leaves on them, and they made a soft place on which Uncle Wiggily fell. He was scratched some, but Nurse Jane’s court plaster would fix that. The airship, however, kept on falling until it landed on the ground at the foot of the tree.
“Oh, I wonder how I am to get down?” said Uncle Wiggily. “It is very far from the top of this tree to the earth, and I cannot climb, as the Bushytail squirrel boys, or as Kittie Kat can. What shall I do? Oh, dear!”
And just then along came Johnnie Bushytail, the squirrel boy, himself.
“I’ll help you get down!” called Johnnie to Uncle Wiggily. “I’ll get a rope, and climb up with it to you. Then you can make a rope ladder, fasten one end to a limb of the tree, and climb down that.”
“Fine!” cried Uncle Wiggily. The little squirrel boy found a grape vine rope, and up the tree he scrambled, carrying one end of it up to Uncle Wiggily, who soon made a rope ladder, such as sailors use. Then the rabbit gentleman came down on that as nicely as you please.
“Well, my airship is badly broken,” he said, as he looked at the burst balloons and the bent and twisted clothes basket. “I shall have to fix it before I can sail again.”
“Do you mean to tell me you are going up in that dangerous thing again?” asked Nurse Jane Fuzzy Wuzzy, as she stuck a piece of red, white and blue court plaster on Uncle Wiggily’s nose, where the hail stone had hit him.
“I am going to try,” he said, modest like, and shy.
“Oh, dear me, and some popcorn cakes!” cried Nurse Jane. “I never saw such a rabbit—never!”
