started back toward his hollow-stump bungalow. He had not gone very
far before he saw a nurse maid, out in the garden, back of a big
house. There was a basket in front of the maid, with some clothes in
it, and stretched across the garden was a line, with more clothes on
it, flapping in the wind.

"Ha!" exclaimed Uncle Wiggily. "I wonder if that garden maid,
hanging up the clothes, wouldn't like to smell Nurse Jane's perfume?
Nurse Jane will not mind, and perhaps it will be doing that maid a
kindness to let her smell something sweet, after she has been
smelling washing-soap-suds all morning."

So the bunny uncle, who was always doing kind things, hopped over to
the garden maid, and politely asked:

"Wouldn't you like to smell this perfume?" and he held out the
bottle he had bought of the bee lady.

The garden maid turned around, and said in a sad voice:

"Thank you, Uncle Wiggily. It is very kind of you, I'm sure, and I
would like to smell your perfume. But I can't."

"Why not?" asked the bunny uncle. "The cork is out of the bottle.
See!"

"That may very well be," went on the garden maid, "but the truth of
the matter is that I cannot smell, because a blackbird has nipped
off my nose."

Uncle Wiggily, in great surprise, looked, and, surely enough, a
blackbird had nipped off the nose of the garden maid.

"Bless my whiskers!" cried the bunny uncle. "What a thing for a
blackbird to do--nip off your nose! Why did he do such an impolite
thing as that?"

"Why, he had to do it, because it's that way in the Mother Goose
book," said the maid. "Don't you remember? It goes this way:

"'The King was in the parlor,
Counting out his money,
The Queen was in the kitchen,
Eating bread and honey.
The maid was in the garden,
Hanging out the clothes,
Along came a blackbird
And nipped off her nose.'

"That's the way it was," said the garden maid.

"Oh, yes, I remember now," spoke Uncle Wiggily.

"Well, I'm the maid who was in the garden, hanging out the clothes,"
said she, "and, as you can see, along came a blackbird and nipped
off my nose. That is, you can't see the blackbird, but you can see
the place where my nose ought to be."

"Yes," answered Uncle Wiggily, "I can. It's too bad. That blackbird
ought to have his feathers ruffled."

"Oh, he didn't mean to be bad," said the garden maid. "He had to do
as it says in the book, and he had to nip off my nose. So that's why
I can't smell Nurse Jane's ni