s
driving it saw them, and ran home. And they didn't climb a hill again
for ever and ever so long.

Now, if I hear a potato bug whistle a tune on a cornstalk fiddle, I'm
going to tell you next about Buddy and Brighteyes going in bathing.

STORY XXVII

BUDDY AND BRIGHTEYES GO BATHING

"Oh, dear!" exclaimed Buddy Pigg one day. "Oh, dear! Oh, dear me suz
dud!"

"Why, Buddy, dear, whatever in the world is the matter?" asked his
mamma, and Brighteyes, who was mending some stockings, looked up at her
brother in much surprise.

"Oh, dear!" cried the little guinea pig boy again, "I wish I had
something to do. It's so hot and dry and dusty here. I wish some of the
fellows would come around or--or I even wish school would begin again,
so I would have something to do."

Now when a boy wishes for school, in the middle of vacation, you may be
sure something serious is the matter. Mrs. Pigg knew this at once, so
she asked:

"What would you like to do, Buddy?"

"I don't know," he answered, rather cross and fretful-like, which wasn't
very nice, I suppose.

"All the boys have gone to Asbury Park or Ocean Grove," said Brighteyes,
"and I guess you are lonesome, Buddy. It must be lovely at the
seashore," and Brighteyes sighed the least bit, and took such a big
stitch in the stocking she was mending that she had to rip it out and do
it over again.

"Well, we can't go to the seashore this season because the salt air
doesn't agree with your father," said Mrs. Pigg. "If all goes well, we
shall soon be in the country, however. But now, what do you like best
about the seashore, Buddy?"

"Going in bathing," he answered.

"You can do that right here at home," said his mamma. "I will get out
your bathing suits, and you and Brighteyes can go swimming in the pond
back of our house."

"That will be lovely!" cried Brighteyes, and she jumped up so quickly
that she dropped the basket of stockings, and her pink hair ribbon came
off, and she was all confused-like.

"There are no waves in the pond, like down in the ocean at Asbury,"
complained Buddy. "It is no fun to go in bathing where there are no
waves."

"Ha! What's that?" cried a voice, and then Percival, the old circus dog,
who was staying with the Piggs while the Bow Wow family, with whom he
lived, was away for the summer--Percival, I say, got up from where he
had been sleeping under a mosquito net to keep off the flies. "No waves,
eh? So you want waves, do you, when y