“What would you like to do, Buddy?”

“I don’t know,” he answered, rather cross and fretful-like, which wasn’t very nice, I suppose.

“All the boys have gone to Asbury Park or Ocean Grove,” said Brighteyes, “and I guess you are lonesome, Buddy.  It must be lovely at the seashore,” and Brighteyes sighed the least bit, and took such a big stitch in the stocking she was mending that she had to rip it out and do it over again.

“Well, we can’t go to the seashore this season because the salt air doesn’t agree with your father,” said Mrs. Pigg.  “If all goes well, we shall soon be in the country, however.  But now, what do you like best about the seashore, Buddy?”

“Going in bathing,” he answered.

“You can do that right here at home,” said his mamma.  “I will get out your bathing suits, and you and Brighteyes can go swimming in the pond back of our house.”

“That will be lovely!” cried Brighteyes, and she jumped up so quickly that she dropped the basket of stockings, and her pink hair ribbon came off, and she was all confused-like.

“There are no waves in the pond, like down in the ocean at Asbury,” complained Buddy.  “It is no fun to go in bathing where there are no waves.”

“Ha!  What’s that?” cried a voice, and then Percival, the old circus dog, who was staying with the Piggs while the Bow Wow family, with whom he lived, was away for the summer—­Percival, I say, got up from where he had been sleeping under a mosquito net to keep off the flies.  “No waves, eh?  So you want waves, do you, when you go in bathing, Buddy?” asked Percival.

“Yes,” answered Buddy Pigg, “I do, Percival.”

“Then,” exclaimed the old circus dog, “you and Brighteyes shall have them.  Get on your bathing suits and come down to the pond.  When you get there you’ll find waves enough; I’ll guarantee that!  Oh, my, yes, and a life-preserver besides!”

“How?” asked Buddy.  “There are never any waves in that pond.”

“Just you wait and see,” said Percival.

Mrs. Pigg smiled, but she didn’t say anything, and went after the bathing suits, while Buddy and Brighteyes wondered what was going to happen.  Percival ran out, winking first one eye and then the other, and not both together, like some dollies do when they go to sleep, and he gave three short barks and a long one, just to show how glad he felt to be doing something.

Well, it didn’t take Buddy and Brighteyes very long to put on their bathing suits.  Then they hurried out of the back of the house and went toward the pond.

“Do you really s’pose there’ll be waves?” asked Buddy.

“I don’t know,” answered his sister.  “Percival is a very smart dog, you know.”

Well, they ran down to the pond, and the first thing they saw when they got there were cords fastened to sticks driven down into the ground, just like the ropes at Asbury Park, you know—­if you’ve ever been there.  The ropes are for the bathers to take hold of when the waves come.