“Run faster!” urged Curly.

Well, they both ran as fast as they could, squealing with fright, and the alligator man was coming right after them, and he had almost caught them when, all of a sudden, a little squeaky voice called out: 

“In here, boys!  Crawl right in here, under this shock of corn, and he can’t see you!”

They looked, and there, in front of a sort of cave, that was made in one of the upright piles of corn, stood the little mousie girl who had been pinched by the stone on her tail.

“In here!” she cried.  “Quick, before he comes, and he won’t know where you have gone!”

“But he’ll know we’re hiding in the corn,” said Flop.

“Quick!  Get inside and talk afterward!” said the mousie girl.  “Besides there are so many piles of corn that the alligator man won’t know which one you’re hiding in, and it will take him all night to peek into them all.  And after dark I’ll show you the way home.”

So into the shock of corn crawled Curly and Flop pulling a lot of stalks behind them to close the hole, and they were only just in time, for, an instant later, up rushed the alligator man.  Of course he could not see the piggy boys, and he was much surprised.

“But I know they’re hiding somewhere!” he growled.  And it all happened just as the mousie girl said.  The alligator man peeked in nearly all the corn shocks, but he didn’t happen to look in the one where Curly and Flop were hiding.  And pretty soon it was dark, and then the piggies came out and the mousie girl showed them the way home, and the alligator man did not get them.  So, you see, the mousie helped the piggie boys after all.

And next, in case the salt cellar doesn’t hide in the pepper caster and make believe it’s a mustard plaster I’ll tell you about Flop having a tumble.

STORY XVI

FLOP HAS A TUMBLE

“Come boys!” called Mamma Twistytail, the pig lady, one morning, to her two little boys, Curly and Flop.  “Come, hurry, or you’ll be late for school!”

“Oh, I guess we have time enough,” spoke Flop, as he looked around for the football he and his brother had been playing with.  “It’s early yet.”

“No, it isn’t,” answered his mamma.  “Our clock is slow by your papa’s watch.  Hurry now, I think I hear the bell ringing!”

“All right,” answered Curly.  “Come along, Flop.”  You see, he sometimes called his brother Flop, for short.  So they kissed their little sister, Baby Pinky, good-by, and went on to school.

As they hurried along, they met Jackie Bow Wow, the puppy dog boy, and Curly said: 

“Oh, Jackie, where is my pencil you borrowed?”

“Here it is!” cried Jackie, turning a somersault, as he used to do in the circus, and he handed the pencil to Curly on the end of his nose—­Jackie’s nose I mean.

“We chased after you last night, when we got out of school,” explained Curly, “and we had a dreadful adventure in the corn field with the alligator man,” and he told his doggie chum all about it, just as I wrote it for you in the story before this one.