“Ah, ha!” he cried.  “Now I have you.  Now for some roast pork and apple sauce!” and he made a grab for Flop, but he didn’t quite catch him, I’m glad to say.  And how that little piggie boy did run!  Faster and faster he ran, carrying the bag of meal for the Johnny cake, but still the ’gator came after him and almost had him.

“Oh, will no one save me?” cried Flop, for he could hardly run any more, and then all of a sudden, he came to the place where the elephant was still sitting on a stump, resting himself.

“Oh, help me!  Help me!” cried Flop.

“Indeed, I will!” shouted the elephant.  And with that, in his strong trunk, he lifted Flop up on his broad back.  Still the skillery-scalery alligator came on, and he cried in his rasping voice: 

“I want that pig!”

“Oh you do, eh?” asked the elephant, sarcastic like.  “Well, you can’t have him.  Take that!” and then the elephant just reached around back with his trunk and took some corn meal out of the bag that Flop held and the elephant blew the meal in the alligator’s eyes and nose and mouth and then—­

“A-choo!  Aker-choo!  Boo-hoo!  Hoo hoo!  Splitzie-doo!  Foo-foo!” sneezed the alligator, turning forty-’leven somersaults.  “Oh, dear me, what a cold I have!” and he sneezed so hard that all of his back teeth dropped out, and he couldn’t bite any one for nearly a week.  And then he crawled off, leaving Flop to go home in peace and quietness and watch his mamma make a Johnny cake.

And when the cake was baked they gave the kind elephant some to take to the codfish ball with him, and that’s the end of this story, if you please.

But on the next page, if I have left any of those ice cream cones with raisins inside, to give to the trolley car conductor when he punches my transfer, I’ll tell you about the piggie boys at school.

STORY VII

PIGGY BOYS AT SCHOOL

One day Curly, the little pig who had such a funny shaped tail, said to his brother, Flop Ear: 

“Say, let’s run off and look for adventures as Uncle Wiggily, the old gentleman rabbit, used to do!”

“Where shall we run?” asked Flop.

“Oh, almost anywhere,” answered Curly.  “We’ll go down the road, toward Sylvan Way, and out beyond the old black stump, and turn the corner around the place where the apple tree grows, and then we’ll see what will happen.”

“All right,” agreed Flop, so the two little pig brothers started off.  Their mamma was making some red flannel pies in the kitchen, ready for winter, and of course she did not see them go, or perhaps she might have stopped them.

Pretty soon, in a little while, oh, maybe in about an hour and a half, Curly and Flop came to a building all made of red brick, with a chimney sticking from the top for the smoke to come out of, and a lot of doors and windows in it.

“I wonder what that is?” said Flop.