“My goodness me! sakes alive and a corn cob,” exclaimed Mrs. Twistytail.  “The children must have done this to help me.  My, but I am surprised.  But I wonder where they are?” Then she saw Flop and Pinky playing tag, but she couldn’t see Curly.

“Oh, Curly, Curly, where are you?” she called, and her little boy answered: 

“I’m up in the tree with the pillow-case!” Then his mamma saw him and she nearly fainted.  But she didn’t quite faint, and then she telephoned for a fireman with a long ladder, who came and got Curly safely down.

So that’s how he helped his mamma, and he surprised her more than he meant to, but it all came out right in the end.  And soon the washing was all done, and the firemen gave each of the pig children a penny.

So that’s all now, but in the next story, in case the oil can doesn’t slide down the clothes pole and break the handle off the pump, so the angle worm can’t get his ice cream cone, I’ll tell you about Curly and the elephant.

STORY V

CURLY AND THE ELEPHANT

When Curly Twistytail, the little pig boy, was digging away with his nose in the front yard, one day, hunting for lollypops, or maybe ice cream cones, under the grass, for all that I know; one day, I say, as he was rooting away, he heard his mamma calling: 

“Oh, Curly; Oh, Flop Ear!  I want some one to go to the store for me.”

“That means I’ve got to go,” thought Curly, as he looked around to see if his tail was still kinked into a little twist.

“I’ll have to go because Flop is off playing ball with Bully the frog.  Well, there’s no use getting cross about it,” so, giving a cheerful grunt or two, just to show that he didn’t at all mind, Curly ran around to the back door and said: 

“What is it, mamma?  I’ll go to the store for you?”

“Oh, there you are!” exclaimed Mrs. Twistytail.  “Well, I want a dozen eggs, and be sure to get fresh ones, and don’t smash them on the way home.”

“I won’t,” said the little piggie boy, and with that he ran down the street squealing a tune about a little monkey who hung down by his tail, and when he went to sleep he sat inside the water pail.

Well, Curly got the eggs all right, and he was on his way home with them, when, all at once, as he came to the corner of the woods, where an old stump stood, out from behind it jumped a bad dog.

“Ha, what have you in that bag, little piggie boy?” asked the bad dog, catching hold of Curly by his ear so that he could not run away.

“Eggs,” answered Curly.  “There are eggs in this bag for a cake my mamma is going to bake.”

“No, you are mistaken,” said the dog, gritting his teeth.  “Those eggs are for me, I want to eat them,” and he reached out his paw for the paper bag.

Now, though Curly did not know it, this was a bad egg dog—­that is, he liked to eat eggs raw, without ever boiling or frying them, and that kind of a dog is the worst there is.  No one likes him, not even the old rooster who crows in the morning.