For of course they were inside the pumpkin, rolling over and over, like a rubber ball down hill.  The wolf chewed up the bread, and then he saw the rolling pumpkin.  Then he happened to think: 

“Perhaps the pigs are inside that!” After it he ran, but it was too late, for by that time the piggie boys were safely at home.  Into their front yard rolled the pumpkin, off flew the top, and out they jumped to tell their papa and mamma and baby Pinky all about it.

And Grandpa Goosey Gander loaned Mr. Twistytail a loaf of bread for supper.  As for the wolf, he ran back up the hill as mad as anything about the way he had been fooled, and ever after that he never ate any pumpkin pie.

So that’s all there is to this story, but in case the new brick chimney doesn’t fall down in the rice pudding and make the trained nurse wild because her doll carriage has no wheels, I’ll tell you on the next page about the piggie boys in the corn field.

STORY XV

THE PIGGIES IN A CORNFIELD

One day—­oh!  I guess it must have been about two grunts and a squeal after Curly and Flop, the two piggie boys, had the adventure with the pumpkin—­something else happened to them.  In the first place, they had to stay in after school.

Now, please don’t get worried, nor think anything bad of them on that account.  They did not have to stay in because they whispered in class, or anything like that.  No, they stayed in to help their teacher clean off the blackboards, but when they got out all the other animal children were gone.

“Come on, let’s run,” suggested Flop, “and maybe we can catch up to them.”

“I wish we could!” exclaimed Curly, “for Jackie Bow Wow, the puppy dog, borrowed my pencil and forgot to give it back.”

So the two piggie boys ran as fast as they could, but they could see nothing of the other animal children—­not even little Jennie Chipmunk, who could not go very fast, for every time she saw any dust on a stone or a tree stump she used to stop and brush it off with her tail.  She was so neat and clean, you see, and as she had to stop quite often, on account of there being so much dust, she couldn’t go fast at all.

But, as I said, Curly and Flop couldn’t even catch up to her, which shows you that they had stayed in after school for quite some time.

“Oh! they’ll all be home long before us,” said Curly after a bit, sitting down on a stone to rest.

“I guess so,” agreed his brother, as he made his two ears stand up straight and then flop down again.  “But never mind, I think you can get your pencil from Jackie Bow Wow tomorrow.”

“Yes,” spoke Curly, and then they went on a little farther until they came to a corn field.  The corn was all cut down, and stood in big bunches, called shocks—­not the kind of shocks you get from an electric battery, though, but corn shocks.