The Giggle Potion
One fine day, when the sun was shining and the daisies were blooming, Riley the Rabbit sat in the middle of Bubbly Meadow. Now Bubbly Meadow was just the place for fun, with light breezes blowing, clouds skipping overhead, and flowers nodding everywhere. Riley was full of pep that day, as you can easily guess from his name, and he wished everybody shared his feelings. But somehow they did not.
The birds were hopping about the ground and twittering in low tones. The rabbits were munching their breakfasts without even a waggle of a long ear. The squirrels looked worried; the chipmunks scampered around, appearing more frightened than ever. Even the butterflies flitted about without cheer.
“What would you do,” suddenly asked one bit of fluff, “if a gloomy cloud settled in your heart and you knew it was going to rain—rain, rain, rain, for days and days without stopping?”
“Oh, I would try to find something sunny to drive the cloud away,” Riley answered promptly. “Why don’t we play some merry pratfalls right here and laugh until we split, to drive away the gloom from our hearts?”
With that, Riley jumped high into the air and tumbled down on his back with a laugh. But no one joined him. They all gazed at him with droopy faces that positively made him feel sad.
And after everyone had unkindly refused to play with him, he sauntered off in search of some one more amiable, hoping to find a friend in Bunny Brown.
“I wonder what makes everybody so glum to-day?” thought the little fellow. “Bunny ought to know.”
But soon he was forced to give it up. Even Mrs. Brown took on dogged looks when he entered.
“It seems too bad for Bunny to be the only one,” thought Riley. “But I can soon make him happy—if I can find my masher of a brother, Dad, and he has not gone elsewhere.”
He did not find his brother, Dad, anywhere about. So he gazed down Bubbly Chestnut Lane and there was his guide. There too was his friend, Bunny Brown.
Bunny gave one glance at Riley, who carried something wrapped in a leaf.
“Ah, ha!” Bunny cried heartily, “real or pretend?”
“Real, of course,” Riley said. And he opened the leaf and showed Bunny the mixture inside it.
It was rather a funny thing to look at. There was a deep red, a green, a black, and a yellow. They looked as if they had been mixed in a bowl, especially since they ran together, and it also sent out a whiff, as you might say, when the wind blew that tickled Bunny’s nose bordering on a sneeze.
“What is it?” Bunny asked.
“It is a giggle potion,” said Riley.
“A giggle potion! Whatever is that?”
“It’s something to make you laugh and feel as happy as happy can be all day.”
Riley explained what he meant, and then he said, “Will you come home with me, Bunny, and I’ll give you some? Then you can give some to your mother and everybody else—“ he added quickly.
But, of course, nobody wanted any. But Riley had to travel all the way to his house, all alone, and when he reached it, he discovered that he had lost himself entirely. Just once or twice before he had been to Bunny Brown’s house, but this time he had missed the right road.
“Never you mind,” said the cheerful little boy when he came up. “Just follow me, and you’ll get to Riley’s house all right.”
So they strode off together, and in a few minutes arrived at Bubbly Young Lane, where Bunny invited Riley to dine with him.
Meanwhile, all this time Mrs. Brown and Riley’s mother were chatting together, and of course this conversation was about Bunny and Riley.
Mrs. Brown said what a fine boy he had grown, and also repeated what a fine mother Riley had.
Riley’s mother said she was over-joyed at hearing how well Bunny was getting along. And so they went on, praising each other’s offspring so forcibly that each was in the mind of the other in the most jealous way possible and hinted darkly.
“Whenever that young squirrel wanders about here, I am going to pay him back in his own kind, and he’s up to anything.”
Now this was altogether, of course, mean and unfair. Without having known these ill-natured little remarks would reach Bunny and Riley, they were overjoyed at being together and hurried off in search of fun.
They had no sooner quitted the house than they heard above them a loud squeaky voice shrilling out, “Toot, toot, toot do I wancht to ah, be mischievous do I want to quarrel the greatest till of all is the um you slay with. Toys toys is the finest you kin ever take I’ll see that for yeah, yeah.”
But nobody heeded Mr. Roly Poly was all he saw, as he hopped to the ground and waddled towards them.
“I wonder what that little fellow will do,” Bunny said.
“Oh, just go on saying such funny things as nobody can help laughing at.”
Mr. Roly Poly gave a twist of his head and cocked his eyes sideways. And then he cried in squeak worse than ever.
“Now we know what he came for,” Riley said, wagging his long ears.
Of course, large monticules on the field before them were dotted all over with caps, portraying particularly large ones. Some of them nearly covered the entire monticule with a long, white beard going right down, and from every cap hung tons. Together they looked uncommonly like a sheep. Other otages were smaller and finer, the tops extending over the sides—round browning which you might think had just been done by Mr. Mutton Chops himself, if he preferred wearing round mirror-looking wet thing, instead of being polished with sand.
The monticule and the field in front and brimstone, which drifted or otherwise ached constantly soon and for all—quite a dreadful thing to have. We call it a sore because it is not.
The young giants that looked after these monticules and stalactites always wore pointz-headed long nightcaps, of which you are now to hear afresh. And it was one day when the young ones had plenty to eat, so they amused themselves discharging from their noses the wet, which when it had sepulchrally floored hard, disappeared: so it was signified did likewise the dripping.
The old ones looked down over the side of the wall and thought the young ones were doing no end of mischief.
That was always the nature of those lads, ready to laugh and joke, and do anything you please except work. Ever so many of them were made to fetch the water quite near to the middle of the universe, stuck it all in one little cup, and then they all hurried back again, and made themselves laugh by giving little capsules of it from their mouths.
When Mr. Roly Poly was quite tired the hills and the water would appear to “have dried itself up long ago—so it was signified.”