away for
a moment or two before he spoke.

"These pigs," he said, "won't ever have tails. Not one of them would
know what to do with a tail if you gave him one. They don't want tails.
They have no use for them. And now that you see for yourself how happy
they are without tails, you ought not to delay any longer about having
yours cut off. I hope," Spot added, "I'll see your tail nailed up on the
barn to-morrow, where everybody can admire it."

Then Grunty Pig said something that surprised him.

"Why don't you have your own tail cut off?" he asked old Spot.

And before old Spot could think of an answer, Johnnie Green came running
out of the woodshed.

"Get away from my guinea pigs!" he shouted.

Grunty and Spot both turned and ran in opposite directions. Grunty
didn't see Spot again for more than a week. When they did at last meet,
old Spot never mentioned tails at all. To tell the truth, he seemed to
feel somewhat ashamed of himself for having tried to play a trick on
Grunty Pig.

Or maybe he felt ashamed because he was caught at it.

XXI

BEECHNUTS

Down the hill, a little way from Farmer Green's house, a great beech
tree stood beside the road. In the fall, when the nuts were ripe,
Johnnie Green often visited the tree. And so did Frisky Squirrel. And
so, likewise, did that noisy rascal, Jasper Jay. They liked
beechnuts--all three. And somehow they got the notion that the beech
tree belonged to them--and to nobody else.

One fine, crisp fall day when Johnnie Green was in school, a fourth
nut-lover wandered down the road, stopped right between the wheel
tracks, and sniffed. It was Grunty Pig. "I smell beechnuts!" he cried
with a joyful squeal. And crashing into the light underbrush along the
roadside, he began to search among the fallen leaves with his long nose.

Soon Grunty came upon a cluster of the three-sided nuts, clinging inside
a bur that the frost had split open. He ate the sweet nuts, shells and
all. And with many a grunt of delight he grubbed beneath the tree from
which the nuts had fallen. His keen nose led him to burs that Johnnie
Green had trampled over that very morning, and missed.

"I wonder--" said Grunty Pig aloud--"I wonder why nobody ever told me
about this beech tree."

"Perhaps it was because you are a pig," said a voice right over his
head.

He looked up. And there on a low branch sat Frisky Squirrel. Grunty
knew him; he had sometimes seen him around Farmer Green's cor