made of yellow carrots and red beets, and very pretty they looked on the
white bread, let me tell you; very nice indeed!

Uncle Wiggily was eating away, and he was brushing the crumbs off his nose
by wiggling his ears, when, all of a sudden, he heard a cat crying. Oh,
such a loud cry as it was!

"Why, some poor kittie must be lost," thought the old gentleman rabbit.
"I'll see if I can find it."

Then the cry sounded again, and, in another moment, out of a tree flew a
big bird.

"Oh, maybe that bird stuck his sharp beak in the kittie and made it cry,"
thought Uncle Wiggily. "Bird, did you do that?" he asked, calling to the
bird, who was flying around in the air.

"Did I do what?" asked the bird.

"Did you stick the kittie, and make it cry?"

"Oh, no," answered the bird. "I made that cat-crying noise myself. I am a
cat-bird, you know," and surely enough that bird went "Mew! Mew! Mew!"
three times, just like that, exactly as if a cat had cried under your
window, when you were trying to go to sleep.

"Ha! That is very strange!" exclaimed the rabbit. "So you are a cat-bird."

"Yes, and my little birds are kittie-birds," was the answer. "I'll show
you."

So the bird went "Mew! Mew! Mew!" again, and a lot of the little birds
came flying around and they all went "Mew! Mew!" too, just like kitties.
Oh, I tell you cat-birds are queer things! and how they do love cherries
when they are ripe! Eh?

"That is very good crying, birdies," said Uncle Wiggily, "and I think I'll
give you something to eat, to pay for it." So he took out from his valise
some peanuts, that Percival, the circus dog, had given him, and Uncle
Wiggily fed them to the cat-bird and her kittie-birds.

"You are very kind," said the mamma bird, "and if we can ever do you a
favor we will."

And now listen, as the telephone girl says, those birds are going to do
Uncle Wiggily a favor in a short time--a very short time indeed.

Well, after the birds had eaten all the peanuts they flew away, and Uncle
Wiggily started off once more. He hadn't gone very far before he came to
a fountain. You know what that is. It's a thing in a park that squirts up
water, just like when you fill a rubber ball with milk or lemonade and
squeeze it. Only a fountain is bigger, of course.

This fountain that Uncle Wiggily came to had no water in it, for it was
being cleaned. There was a big basin, with a pipe up through the middle,
and this was where the water spouted up when i