Soon Curly had quite a pile of them by an old stump, and the monkey had built a hot fire.

“Now, we will roast the chestnuts,” spoke Jacko, and he put several pawsful on the hot coals.

“And when will they be roasted?” asked Curly.

“Soon,” answered the monkey.  “We will have a game of tag while we are waiting.”

And, all of a sudden, as they were playing tag, out from under a big flat stone, came the bad skillery-scalery alligator, with a tin horn on his back.  Oh! but he was a bad fellow!

“Ah, ha!” he cried.  “Now I have you!  Now I will have a piggie boy to eat and a monkey boy to wait on the table.  Come along, both of you!” and the bad alligator made a grab for the two friends and was about to carry them off to his den.

“Oh, please let me go!” begged Curly.

“Yes do!” asked the monkey.  “Let us go.”

“No!  No!” snapped the alligator.  And just then there sounded this noise: 

“Bang!  Bang!  Snap!  Crack!  Bang!  Boom!”

“Oh I what is that?” cried the ’gator.  “Oh! the hunters with their guns are after me.  I must run!  This is no place for me!”

Then, dropping Curly and the monkey, the bad alligator ran away as fast as he could, and didn’t hurt either of them, and the “bang-bang!” noises kept getting louder and louder.

“Oh, what are they?” asked Curly, who was almost as much frightened as the alligator had been at the strange sounds.

“Nothing but the roasting chestnuts,” answered Jacko the monkey.  “They are bursting and making noises like guns because the fire is so hot, and because I forgot to make holes in the nuts to let the steam out.  But it is a good thing I did, for they burst and scared the alligator.”

“Indeed, they did,” agreed Curly.

“And we’ll roast some more chestnuts in place of the burst ones,” said the monkey, and he did, and Curly had as many as he wanted, and some to take home.  Soon he arrived at the piggie-house, and every one was glad to see him and the chestnuts, and that’s all to this story.

But in case the pretty Red Cross nurse with the blue eyes and the jolly laugh says that it’s all right for the trolley car to jump over the house and play tag with the chimney, I’ll tell you next about Baby Pinky and the doctor.

STORY XII

BABY PINKY AND THE DOCTOR

One night, in the piggie house where Mr. and Mrs. Twisty tail lived with their three children, there was a crying noise.

“Hey!  What’s that?” asked Curly, one of the piggie boys, as he threw some of the straw from his bed over on the one where his brother Floppy slept.

“Oh, I don’t know.  Cats howling, I guess,” answered Flop.  “Go to sleep and don’t mind ’em.”

So he and Curly tried hard to go to sleep again, but you know how it is, sometimes, the more you try to close your eyes, and dream, the wider awake you get.  It was this way with the two piggie boys, though you can hardly blame them for not sleeping, as the crying noise sounded louder and louder.