he
old gentleman rabbit, across the fields and through the woods to the
chocolate store.

After buying what he wanted for Nurse Jane's cake, the old gentleman
rabbit started back for the hollow-stump bungalow. On the way, he
passed a toy store, and he stopped to look in the window at the
pop-guns, the spinning-tops, the dolls, the Noah's Arks, with the
animals marching out of them, and all things like that.

"It makes me young again to look at toys," said the bunny uncle.
Then he went on a little farther until, all at once, as he was
passing a bush, he heard from behind it the sound of crying.

"Ha! Some one in trouble again," said Uncle Wiggily. "I wonder if it
can be Little Boy Blue?" He looked, but, instead of seeing the
sheep-boy, whom he had once helped, Uncle Wiggily saw a little girl.

"Ha! Who are you?" the bunny uncle asked, "and what is the matter?"

"I am Little Bo Peep," was the answer, "and I have lost my sheep,
and don't know where to find them."

"Why, let them alone, and they'll come home, wagging their tails
behind them," said Uncle Wiggily quickly, and he laughed jolly like
and happy, because he had made a rhyme to go with what Bo Peep said.

"Yes, I know that's the way it is in the Mother Goose book," said
Little Bo Peep, "but I've waited and waited, and let them alone ever
so long, but they haven't come home. And now I'm afraid they'll
freeze."

"Ha! That's so. It _is_ pretty cold for sheep to be out," said Uncle
Wiggily, as he looked across the snow-covered field, and toward the
woods where there were icicles hanging down from the trees.

"Look here, Little Bo Peep," went on the bunny uncle. "I think your
sheep must have gone home long ago, wagging their tails behind them.
And you, too, had better run home to Mother Goose. Tell her you met
me and that I sent you home. And, if I find your sheep, I'll send
them along, too. So don't worry."

"Oh, but I don't like to go home without my sheep," said Bo Peep,
and tears came into her eyes. "I ought to bring them with me. But
today I went skating on Crystal Lake, up in the Lemon-Orange
Mountains, and I forgot all about my sheep. Now I am afraid to go
home without them. Oh, dear!"

Uncle Wiggily thought for a minute, then he said:

"Ha! I have it! I know where I can get you some sheep to take home
with you. Then Mother Goose will say it is all right. Come with me."

"Where are you going?" asked Bo Peep.

"To get you some sheep." And Uncle W