e a bird's nest at a moving picture picnic, I'll tell you
in the next story about Uncle Wiggily and the sunbeam.

STORY XXIII

UNCLE WIGGILY AND THE SUNBEAM

Uncle Wiggily Longears, the nice rabbit gentleman, was walking along in
the woods one day, sort of hopping and leaning on his red, white and
blue striped rheumatism crutch, and he was wondering whether or not he
would have an adventure, when, all at once, he heard a little voice
crying:

"Oh, dear! I never can get up! I never can get up! Oh, dear!"

"Ha! that sounds like some one who can't get out of bed," exclaimed the
bunny uncle. "I wonder who it can be? Perhaps I can help them."

So he looked carefully around, but he saw no one, and he was just about
to hop along, thinking perhaps he had made a mistake, and had not heard
anything after all, when, suddenly, the voice sounded again, and called
out:

"Oh, I can't get up! I can't get up! Can't you shine on me this way?"

"No, I am sorry to say I cannot," answered another voice. "But try to
push your way through, and then I can shine on you, and make you grow."

There was silence for a minute, and then the first voice said again:

"Oh, it's no use! I can't push the stone from over my head. Oh, such
trouble as I have!"

"Trouble, eh?" cried Uncle Wiggily. "Here is where I come in. Who are
you, and what is the trouble?" he asked, looking all around, and seeing
nothing but the shining sun.

"Here I am, down in the ground near your left hind leg," was the
answer. "I am a woodland flower and I have just started to grow. But
when I tried to put my head up out of the ground, to get air, and drink
the rain water, I find I cannot do it. A big stone is in the way,
right over my head, and I cannot push it aside to get up. Oh, dear!"
sighed the Woodland flower.

"Oh, don't worry about that!" cried Uncle Wiggily, in his jolly voice.
"I'll lift the stone off your head for you," and he did, just as he
once had helped a Jack-in-the-pulpit flower to grow up, as I have told
you in another story. Under the stone were two little pale green
leaves on a stem that was just cracking its way up through the brown
earth.

"There you are!" cried the bunny uncle. "But you don't look much like
a flower."

"Oh! I have only just begun to grow," was the answer. "And I never
would have been a flower if you had not taken the stone from me. You
see, when I was a baby flower, or seed, I was covered up in my