Mrs. Pig. "And _always
tell the truth_!"

Her children all repeated the words after her. And Grunty Pig's voice
could have been heard plainly above all the rest.

His mother looked at him fondly. She had always claimed that she had no
favorite among her children. But now she couldn't help thinking what a
promising youngster Grunty was, even if he was the runt of the family.

"That's a good Grunty," said Mrs. Pig. "You won't forget this lesson,
will you?"

"No, Mother!" Grunty answered.

Now, that very afternoon Mrs. Pig took it into her head to have her
children say the morning's lesson again. So she called her youngsters
together. And she asked Grunty the first of all to recite what she had
taught him.

"I think it was something about a bear," he stammered, "but I can't
remember exactly."

"Dear me!" said poor Mrs. Pig. "I don't know what I'll do with this
lad."

Then she asked the other children, one by one, what they had learned
that very morning.

There wasn't one of them that hadn't forgotten everything.

"Dear me!" said unhappy Mrs. Pig. "I don't know what I'll do with all of
them. But I'll treat them all alike. I have no favorite. There isn't one
of them that's stupider than another."

When Grunty Pig heard that he felt quite proud. It was something,
anyhow, to be as stupid as the rest, even if he was smaller.

XIV

AN ODD THOUGHT

"Umph! Umph!"

Farmer Green had fenced off a piece of the old orchard. And into this
new yard he turned Mrs. Pig's children.

"Umph! Umph!"

They had a fine time there, rooting down under the sod, rubbing their
backs against the trunks of the old apple trees, and sprawling in the
shade when they were sleepy.

"Umph! Umph!"

Sometimes an apple dropped from a tree. And then there was a mad
scramble.

"Umph! Umph!"

"Dear me!" said Jolly Robin's wife as she sat in the apple tree where
she and her husband had a nest every summer. "Don't Mrs. Pig's children
make a dreadful noise? I never knew half-grown pigs to have such loud
voices. Their grunts certainly are full-sized."

Jolly Robin, who had perched himself beside his wife, looked down at
their new neighbors.

"They're having a good time," he observed cheerfully. "We ought not to
complain. We may be thankful that they don't climb trees and try to
sing."

Jolly Robin had a way of looking on the bright side of things. It was
seldom that he couldn't act cheerful. Even when he felt quite
downhear