Squinty the Comical Pig | Page 2

so, just as I have told you, Squinty got his name.
"Humph! Squinty!" exclaimed Mrs. Pig, as she heard what the farmer said. "I don't know as I like that."
"Oh, it will do very well," answered Mr. Pig. "It will save you thinking up a name for him. And, after all, you know, he does squint. Not that it amounts to anything, in fact it is rather stylish, I think. Let him be called Squinty."
"All right," answered Mrs. Pig. So Squinty it was.
"Hello, Squinty!" called the boys and girls, giving the little pig his new name. "Hello, Squinty!"
"Wuff! Wuff!" grunted Squinty.
That meant, in his language, "Hello!" you see. For though Squinty, and his mother and father, and brothers and sisters, could understand man talk, and boy and girl talk, they could not speak that language themselves, but had to talk in their own way.
Nearly all animals understand our talk, even though they can not speak to us. Just look at a dog, for instance. When you call to him: "Come here!" doesn't he come? Of course he does. And when you say: "Lie down, sir!" doesn't he lie down? that is if he is a good dog, and minds? He understands, anyhow.
And see how horses understand how to go when the driver says "Gid-dap!" and how they stop when he says "Whoa!" So you need not think it strange that a little pig could understand our kind of talk, though he could not speak it himself.
Well, Squinty, the comical pig, lived with his mother and father and brothers and sisters in the farmer's pen for some time. As the days went on Squinty grew fatter and fatter, until his pink skin, under his white bristles, was swelled out like a balloon.
"Hum!" exclaimed the farmer one day, as he leaned over the top of the pen, to look down on the pigs, after he had poured their dinner into the trough. "Hum! That little pig, with the squinty eye, is getting pretty big. I thought he was going to be a little runt, but he seems to be growing as fast as the others."
Squinty was glad when he heard that, for he wanted to grow up to be a fine, large pig.
The farmer took a corn cob, from which all the yellow kernels of corn had been shelled, and with it he scratched the back of Squinty. Pigs like to have their backs scratched, just as cats like to have you rub their smooth fur, or tickle them under the ears.
"Ugh! Ugh!" grunted Squinty, looking up at the farmer with his comical eyes, one half shut and the other wide open. "Ugh! Ugh!" And with his odd eyes, and one ear cocked forward, and the other flopping over backward, Squinty looked so funny that the farmer had to laugh out loud.
"What's the matter, Rufus?" asked the farmer's wife, who was gathering the eggs.
"Oh, it's this pig," laughed the farmer. "He has such a queer look on his face!"
"Let me see!" exclaimed the farmer's wife.
She, too, looked down into the pen.
"Oh, isn't he comical!" she cried.
Then, being a very kind lady, and liking all the farm animals, the farmer's wife went out in the potato patch and pulled up some pig weed.
This is a green weed that grows in the garden, but it does no good there. Instead it does harm, and farmers like to pull it up to get rid of it. But, if pig weed is no good for the garden, it is good for pigs, and they like to chew the green leaves.
"Here, Squinty!" called the farmer's wife, tossing some of the juicy, green weed to the little pig. "Eat this!"
"Ugh! Ugh!" grunted Squinty, and he began to chew the green leaves. I suppose that was his way of saying: "Thank you!"
As soon as Squinty's brothers and sisters saw the green pig weed the farmer's wife had tossed into the pen, up they rushed to the trough, grunting and squealing, to get some too.
They pushed and scrambled, and even stepped into the trough, so eager were they to get something to eat; even though they had been fed only a little while before.
That is one strange thing about pigs. They seem to be always hungry. And Squinty's brothers and sisters were no different from other pigs.
But wait just a moment. They were a bit different, for they were much cleaner than many pigs I have seen. The farmer who owned them knew that pigs do not like to live in mud and dirt any more than do cows and horses, so this farmer had for his pigs a nice pen, with a dry board floor, and plenty of corn husks for their bed. They had clean water to drink, and a shady place in which to lie down and sleep.
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