“Aha!” exclaimed Buddy Pigg; “there is a stick of red candy?  Oh, fine!  Oh, dandy!  I’ll take it home, and give Brighteyes some.”

That was because she had managed to bring him home some of the molasses that was in the can, in which the little girl guinea pig got stuck fast.  So Buddy picked up the long, round, red thing, with a string dangling from it, and took a big bite.  That is, he tried to, but he found his teeth wouldn’t go through it.

“Wow!” he cried.  “That isn’t a stick of candy at all.”

And the funny part of it was that it wasn’t a stick of candy.  No, not in the least, I do assure you.  What it was Buddy couldn’t guess, though I suppose some of you children can.

Well, anyhow, he picked it up, and carried it in one paw, and his bat and catching glove in the other.  And pretty soon whom should he meet hopping along but Bawly, the frog—­Bully’s brother, you know.  And Bawly was singing away for dear life, this little song, which you will have to get some one to sing for you, as I am as hoarse as two crows and a cricket.  Well, anyhow, this is the song: 

  “As I was hopping along one day,
    Hi diddle um diddle I! 
  A grasshopper sat in a greenwood tree,
    Tum-tum-tum tiddle di! 
  “Oh, where are you going?” the grasshopper 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 grasshopper 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.”

[Illustration]

“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.