t a bit sleepy yet."

Well, all of a sudden, just as he was turning the corner around a big
stone, the rabbit gentleman heard a funny noise.

It wasn't like any one crying, yet it sounded as if some one was in
trouble, for the voice said:

"Oh, dear! I'll never get it big enough, I know I can't! I've combed it
and brushed it, and done it up in curl papers to make it fluffy, but still
it isn't like theirs. What shall I do?"

"Hum, I wonder who that can be?" thought Uncle Wiggily. "Perhaps it is
some little lost child; but no children would be out in the woods at
night. I'll take a look."

So he hopped softly over, and peered around the edge of the stone, and
what do you think he saw?

Why, there was a nice, little, red squirrel-girl, and she had a comb and a
brush, and little looking-glass. And the glass was stuck up on a stump
where the moon-beam that Uncle Wiggily was following shone on it and
reflected back again. And by the light of the moon-beam the red squirrel
was combing and brushing out her tail as hard as she could comb and brush
it.

"What are you doing?" asked Uncle Wiggily in surprise.

"Oh, my! How you startled me!" exclaimed the red squirrel. "But I'm glad
it's you, Uncle Wiggily. I'm going to a surprise party soon, and I was
just trying to make my tail as big as Johnnie or Billie Bushytail's, but I
can't do it," she said sadly.

"No, and you never can," said the rabbit. "Their tails are a different
kind than yours, for they are gray squirrels and you are a red one. But
yours is very nice. Be content to have yours as it is."

"I guess I will," said the red squirrel. "But what are you doing out so
late, Uncle Wiggily?"

"Looking for the end of the moon-beam to get my fortune."

"Ha! The moon-beam ends right here," said the red squirrel-girl, pointing
to her looking-glass, and, surely enough, there the bright shaft of light
ended. "But there is no fortune here, Uncle Wiggily, I am sorry to say,"
she added.

"I see there isn't," answered the rabbit. "Well, I must travel on again
to-morrow, then. But now I will see that you get safely home, for it is
getting late."

And, just as he said that, what should happen but that a black, savage,
ugly bear stuck his nose out of the bushes and made a grab for the rabbit.
But what do you think the red squirrel did?

She just took her hair brush and with the hard back of it she whacked the
bear on the end of his tender-ender nose, and he howled, and turn