said the
muskrat lady, "and we thought perhaps you might like to take one to
your friend, Grandfather Goosey Gander."

[Illustration]

"Fine!" cried Uncle Wiggily, making his nose twinkle like a star on
a Christmas tree in the dark. "Grandpa Goosey will be glad to get a
pie. I'll take him one."

"We have it all ready for you," said Mrs. Bushytail, the squirrel
mother of Johnnie and Billie, as she came in the sitting-room. "It's
a nice hot pie, and it will keep your paws warm, Uncle Wiggily, as
you go over the ice and snow through the woods and across the
fields."

"Fine!" cried the bunny uncle again. "I'll get ready and go at
once."

Uncle Wiggily put on his warm fur coat, fastened his tall silk hat
on his head, with his ears sticking up through holes cut in the
brim, so it would not blow off, and then, taking his red, white and
blue striped rheumatism crutch, that Nurse Jane had gnawed for him
out of a cornstalk, away he started. He carried the hot apple pie in
a basket over his paw.

"Grandpa Goosey will surely like this pie," said Uncle Wiggily to
himself, as he lifted the napkin that was over it to take a little
sniff. "It makes me hungry myself. And how nice and warm it is," he
went on, as he put one cold paw in the basket to warm it; warm his
paw I mean, not the basket.

Over the fields and through the woods hopped the bunny uncle. It
began to snow a little, but Uncle Wiggily did not mind that, for he
was well wrapped up.

When he was about halfway to Grandpa Goosey's house Uncle Wiggily
heard, from behind a pile of snow, a sad sort of crying voice.

"Hello!" exclaimed the bunny uncle, "that sounds like some one in
trouble. I must see if I can help them."

Uncle Wiggily looked over the top of the pile of snow, and, sitting
on the ground, in front of a big icicle, was a boy all dressed in
blue. Even his eyes were blue, but you could not very well see them,
as they were filled with tears.

"Oh, dear! Oh, dear!" said Uncle Wiggily, kindly. "This is quite too
bad! What is the matter, little fellow; and who are you?"

"I am Little Boy Blue, from the home of Mother Goose," was the
answer, "and the matter is that it's lost!"

"What is lost?" asked Uncle. "If it's a penny I will help you find
it."

"It isn't a penny," answered Boy Blue. "It's the hay stack which I
have to sleep under. I can't find it, and I must see where it is or
else things won't be as they are in the Mother Goose book. Don't you