Part 9 (1/2)

”As I was hopping along one day, Hi diddle um diddle I!

A gra.s.shopper sat in a greenwood tree, Tum-tum-tum tiddle di!

”Oh, where are you going?” the gra.s.shopper asked.

”Oh, not very far,” I said.

”May I go along?” asked the funny bug.

And he stood right up on his head.

”Why yes,” I told him, ”come along,”

Tu ri lum diddle day.

”The weather is certainly fine just now,”

Fum lum dum skiddle fay.

But the gra.s.shopper fell in a deep, dark bog, And I pulled him out on a sunken log, And then came along a bad, savage dog, And we both ran away.”

[Ill.u.s.tration]

”Oh, ho! So that's the way it was, eh?” asked Buddy, who had never heard that song before.

”That's exactly how it was, and not a bit different, I give you my word for it,” said Bawly, the frog. ”But what have you there, Buddy?

Peppermint candy, as sure as I can sing! May I have a bit?”

”You could have it if it was candy,” promised Buddy, real politely, ”only it isn't,” and he looked at the queer red thing from all sides, and he couldn't make out what it was, and neither could Bawly.

Well, I'll tell you what it was, so you can understand the story better.

It was a firecracker. Yes, sir, a big, red firecracker that, somehow or other, hadn't gone off on Fourth of July when it ought to have done so.

I presume some boy had lighted it, tossed it into the bushes and it had gone out and stayed out until Buddy found it. At any rate, he didn't know what it was, and he took it home. Neither did Mr. Pigg know what it was, but Buddy's mother and sister thought it was quite a pretty ornament, and Mrs. Pigg put it on the parlor mantle, where company could see it.

Well, one day, not long after this, Dr. Pigg was home all alone, for his wife and the children had gone to a moving-picture show. He was dozing away in his easy chair, with a newspaper over his face to keep away the flies, when, all of a sudden, there came a knock on the door.

”My goodness alive! Who's there?” cried Dr. Pigg.

”It's me,” answered a voice.

”And who, pray tell, may you be?” asked Dr. Pigg.

”I'm a bad tramp fox,” was the answer, ”and I want you to give me something to eat. Quick! I'm in a hurry!”

Now that wasn't a nice way to speak, and Dr. Pigg knew it, and, what is more, that bad fox knew it, too. But, do you s'pose he cared? Not a bit of it. He was as impolite as he could be, and he took pride in it.

”I want something to eat in a hurry,” he went on, in a coa.r.s.e, grumbly voice, and he was such a big fox, and Dr. Pigg was such a nice, gentle kind of a creature that he didn't dare refuse him.

”Very well,” said Buddy's papa, ”step into the parlor, Mr. Fox, and I'll see what I can do for you. There ought to be something in the pantry.”

So he went to look in the pantry for a bone, or something like that, just as Mother Hubbard would have done, you know, and when the fox went in the parlor what do you suppose he saw? Why, that big, red firecracker on the mantle, of course. And when he saw it a wicked plan came into his head.