“I guess I’ll just dust off the piano, to keep busy, and it won’t seem so long until mamma comes home.”

So she began knocking the dust off the piano to the floor just as Jennie Chipmunk did it with her tail brush, and Pinky made so much noise that she did not hear the door open and some one come in.  That is she did not until she heard some one walking in the room behind her, and then the little piggie girl turned around and exclaimed: 

“Oh, mamma!  How you frightened me.”

But, oh my! when she saw who was in the room, poor Pinky was frightened more than ever.  For there, with his face all swollen, stood a bad old baboon who had escaped from the monkey circus down the street.

“Bur-r-f!  Ah ha!  Wow!  Now I have you!” barked the baboon, for they make a noise something like a dog with the chicken-pox.

“Why, why, what is the matter?” asked Pinky, never dreaming that there would be trouble, for she was such a gentle little thing.  “Why is your face all swelled up?” she asked.

“I have the mumps,” explained the baboon, who had a blue nose.  “I have the mumps, and I am hungry.  Little pigs are good for the mumps, I have been told.  I guess I’ll take you.”

“Oh!  I’m sure you must be mistaken,” said Pinky, politely.  “Surely you are wrong.  I am not good for mumps, and I’m sure they’re not good for me.”

“Nor me, either,” cried the baboon, putting his paw to his swollen jaw.  “I don’t want ’em but I have to have ’em, and, as you are the only thing that’s good for them, I’m going to take you away with me.  No, on second thought, I’ll eat you up here and now.”

“Oh, please don’t!” cried Baby Pinky, and she wished, Oh! how she did wish her mamma would come back.  “How did you get in here?” she asked.

“I just waited until I saw Mrs. Twistytail go out,” said the blue-nosed baboon, “and then I knew you were here alone.  So in I came, here I am, and now this is the end of you!”

“Oh, please don’t hurt me!” cried Baby Pinky, but that savage baboon, rubbing his blue nose with the end of his tail—­for he had a red tail—­that baboon, I say, made a jump for Pinky.

“Oh!” she cried, as she leaped out of the way.  “I’ll get you something to eat, and then you won’t have to take me,” and out into the kitchen she ran, with the mumpy baboon after her.  All Pinky saw on the table was a lemon, and, thinking the baboon might like lemonade, she caught hold of it, cut it open with a knife, and then—­

Well, that baboon made a jump for her, and, as he did so, Pinky accidentally squeezed the lemon.  Now, as everybody knows, when you have the mumps, if a person even says “pickles,” or “vinegar,” or “lemons” to you, it makes your throat all pucker up and pain you like anything, and you can’t even seem to swallow.  Mumps and sour things don’t seem to go together.

And when the sour lemon juice got in the baboon’s mouth and eyes, and some trickled down on his mumpy throat.  Oh, wow! if you will excuse me saying so.