And I might say, right here, that if you ever try to teach your pets any tricks, you must be both kind and gentle with them, for you know they are not as smart as you are, and cannot think as quickly.

“Ha!  I smell acorns!” thought Squinty to himself.  “I guess the boy must want me to do the first trick, as he calls it, and dig up the acorns.  I’ll do it!”

Carefully Squinty sniffed the air.  When he turned one way he could smell the acorns quite plainly.  When he turned the other way he could not smell them quite so well.  So he started off in the direction where he could most plainly smell the nuts he loved so well.

Next he began rooting in the ground.  At first it was very hard for his nose, but soon it became soft.  Then he could smell the acorns more plainly than before.

“See, he is going right toward them!” cried the boy.

“There, he has them!” exclaimed Sallie.

“Oh, so he has!” spoke Mollie.  “I wouldn’t have thought he could!”

And, by that time, Squinty had found the hole where the boy had covered the acorns with dirt, and Squinty was chewing the sweet nuts.

“Now make him jump the rope,” said Mollie.

“I will, as soon as he eats the acorns,” replied the boy.

“Ha!  I am going to have another apple, just for jumping a rope,” thought Squinty, in delight.

You see the little pig imagined the trick was done just to get him to eat the apple.  He did not count the rope-jumping part of it at all, though that, really, was what the boy wanted.

Once more Bob placed the apple on the ground, on the far side of the rope.  One end of the rope the boy held in his hand, and the other was around Squinty’s leg, but a loop of it was made fast to a stick stuck in the ground, so the boy could pull on the rope and raise or lower it, just as you girls do when you play.

“Come on, now, Squinty!  Jump over it!” called the boy.

The little pig saw the apple, and smelled it.  He wanted very much to get it.  But, when he ran toward it, he found the rope raised up in front of him.  He forgot, for a moment, his second trick, and stood still.

“Oh, I thought you said he would jump the rope!” said Mollie, rather disappointed.

“He will—­just wait a minute,” spoke the boy.  “Come on, Squinty!” he called.

Once more Squinty started for the apple.  This time he remembered that, before, he had to jump the rope to get it.  So he did it again.  Over the rope he went, with a little jump, coming down on the side where the apple was, and, in a second he was chewing the juicy fruit.

“There!” cried the boy.  “Didn’t he jump the rope?”

“Oh, well, but he didn’t jump it fast, back and forth, like we girls do,” said Mollie.

“But it was pretty good—­for a little pig,” said Sallie.

“I think so, too,” spoke the boy.  “And I am going to teach him to jump real fast, and without going for an apple each time.  I’m going to teach him other tricks, too.”