d closer to the rabbit.

"Now, I'll play a trick on that elephant--I'll tickle his trunk for him,
and he'll think it's a mosquito!" said Uncle Wiggily to himself.

He was just about to do this, when suddenly the crawly thing made a sort
of jump toward him, and before the rabbit could move he found himself
grasped by a big, ugly snake, who wrapped himself around the rabbit just
as ladies wrap their fur around their necks in the winter. It wasn't the
elephant's trunk at all, but a bad snake.

"Now, I have you!" hissed the snake like a steam radiator in Uncle
Wiggily's left ear. "I'm going to squeeze you to death and then eat you,"
and he began to squeeze that poor rabbit just like the wash-lady squeezes
clothes in the wringer.

"Oh, my breath! You are crushing all the breath out of me!" cried Uncle
Wiggily. "Please let go of me!"

"No!" hissed the snake, and he squeezed harder than ever.

"Oh, this is the end of me!" gasped the rabbit, when all of a sudden he
heard a great crashing in the bushes. Then a voice cried:

"Here, you bad snake, let go of Uncle Wiggily."

And bless my hat! If the elephant didn't rush up, just in time, and he
grabbed hold of that snake's tail in his trunk, and unwound the snake from
around the rabbit, and then the elephant with a long swing of his trunk
threw the snake so high up in the air that I guess he hasn't yet come
down.

"I was just in time to save you!" said the elephant to Uncle Wiggily.
"Here, eat this ice cream cone and you'll feel better."

So the rabbit did this, and his breath came back and he was all right
again, but he made up his mind never to try to tickle a crawly thing again
until he was sure it wasn't a snake.

So that's all for the present, if you please, but in case my fur hat
doesn't sleep out in the hammock all night, and catch cold in the head so
that it sneezes and wakes up the alarm clock, I'll tell you next about
Uncle Wiggily and the water lilies.

STORY XVI

UNCLE WIGGILY AND THE WATER LILIES

Uncle Wiggily was hopping along through the woods one day, and pretty
soon, as he went past a cute little house, made out of corncobs, he heard
some one calling to him.

"Oh, Mr. Rabbit," a voice said, "have you seen anything of my little
girl?" And there stood a nice mamma cat, looking anxiously about.

"I don't know," answered Uncle Wiggily, as he stopped in the shade of a
tree, and set down his valise. "Was your little girl named Sarah, Mrs.
Cat