“Oh, dear!” exclaimed the teacher.  “Such piggie boys I never saw!  They can’t even be in the baby kindergarten class!”

“Maybe they can do something,” said Susie Littletail’s new baby sister.  “Some trick or anything like that.”

“Of course we can!” cried Curly, who was ashamed that his brother and himself could do nothing the teacher asked.  “Just watch us!” he cried.

So he stood up on the end of his tail and spun around like a top, and then he made a squealing noise like a horn and played a tune called “Ham and Eggs are Very Fine, but Ice Cream Cones are Better.”  Then Flop turned a somersault and stood on one leg, and then the two piggie boys danced up and down together like leaves falling off a tree.

“Oh! those little fellows are smarter than I thought they were,” said the lady bug teacher.  “I guess they can be in our first class after all.”

And just then a great big, bad, black bear rushed into the schoolroom, and he was going to grab up about forty-’leven of the animal children.

But Curly suddenly shouted: 

“Here, you scoot away from us or I’ll make a bee sting you on the nose!” and as the bear was very much afraid of being stung on the end of his soft and tender nose, he ran away as fast as he could and stayed in his den, eating postage stamps for nearly a week, and didn’t bother anybody.

Then the teacher and all the animal children thought the piggie boys were very clever indeed, and the lady bug invited them to come to school whenever they wanted to.  And Curly and Flop said they would come.

Then they ran home to dinner and that’s all there is to this story.  But on the next page, in case the little girl with brown eyes doesn’t cut all the green grass for the rag baby’s hair ribbon, I’ll tell you about Curly being vaccinated.

STORY VIII

CURLY IS VACCINATED

About two days, or maybe three days and part of another one, after Curly Twistytail and his brother, Flop, had run away to school and had performed their funny tricks, as I told you in the story before this one, something else happened.  And this is the way it was: 

Curly was out in the yard in front of the piggy house one morning, raking up the leaves and thinking what fun he would have making a fire and roasting some ears of corn, when he heard his mamma calling: 

“Oh, boys!  Where are you?”

“Here I am,” answered Curly as he jumped over a pile of leaves and fell into the middle of them.  But it did not hurt him, as they were so nice and soft.

“And here I am, too!” exclaimed Flop, and the other little piggie boy, who was up in a hammock, swinging with one of the Katy Dids, jumped down and ran to the back kitchen door.

“What is it, mother?” called both the little piggie boys together.

“I want one of you to go to the store for me,” she said, “I need some chocolate to put on top of a cake.”