"I saw a bear in the pasture!" he cried.
Mrs. Pig promptly forgot her displeasure. Although her son was certainly unharmed, she couldn"t help being startled. It gave her what she called "a turn" to learn that Grunty had met a bear.
"A bear!" Mrs. Pig gasped. "A bear is a terribly dangerous creature.
It"s a wonder that you ever got home.... What did you do when you saw him?" Mrs. Pig demanded.
"I walked away," said Grunty.
"He couldn"t have noticed you," Mrs. Pig declared. "If you had squealed it would have been the end of you."
Grunty Pig felt that he was the most important member of the family. Not one of his brothers or sisters had ever seen a bear. At least they had never claimed to have enjoyed so fearsome a sight.
"It was nothing," he boasted. "I"d as soon meet a bear as the Muley Cow."
His mother, however, was of another mind. She kept looking about in an uneasy fashion.
"I wish Farmer Green would come and put us into our pen," she murmured.
"It will soon be dark. And I shouldn"t like to spend the night out here--not with a bear in the neighborhood."
IX
A GREAT ADVENTURE
The next outing that Farmer Green gave Mrs. Pig"s family in the little yard proved to be anything but a picnic--for Mrs. Pig. That poor lady had a dreadful time. Grunty ran away again. And he hadn"t been gone long before his mother heard a loud squealing in the nearest field. The sound rapidly grew louder. And as she stood still and listened, Mrs. Pig knew that it was Grunty"s squeal and that he was drawing nearer every moment.
"Dear me!" she cried. "He must be in trouble."
Soon Grunty tumbled through the fence. And scrambling to his feet he ran to his mother, crying at the top of his voice, "A bear chased me!"
"Oh! Oh!" shrieked Mrs. Pig. "It"s a mercy he didn"t catch you. Oh! Oh!
It"s lucky you"re no fatter, else you couldn"t have run so fast." Being more than fat, herself, and greatly excited, Mrs. Pig had to stop talking for a time, because she gurgled and wheezed and panted in a most alarming fashion.
At last, when she had somewhat recovered from her flurry, she called to Grunty. And looking at him severely Mrs. Pig said to him, "Let this be a lesson to you. Never, never stray away from the farmyard again!"
"Yes, Mother!" was Grunty"s glib reply. Then he sidled away. Somehow he felt uneasy under his mother"s gaze.
"Perhaps it was a good thing, after all, that the bear chased him,"
Mrs. Pig muttered. "Maybe this fright will keep him at home."
She soon discovered that it would take more than a mere fright--more than a command--to stop Grunty from running away. For it wasn"t long before she missed him again.
If Mrs. Pig hadn"t been so upset she might have been vexed--and with good reason.
"Oh! that dear little Grunty!" she wailed. "The bear may have caught him already, in the cabbage patch."
Then piercing squeals fell once more on Mrs. Pig"s ears.
"Dear! Dear!" she cried. "I ought to have watched him. I ought to have kept an eye on Grunty. After all, he"s little more than a baby."
Again the squeals grew louder. Again Grunty Pig burst through the hole in the fence and romped up to his mother.
"He chased me another time!" he grunted. "The bear chased me almost as far as the fence."
"Sakes alive!" his mother shrieked. "Somebody ought to tell Farmer Green! This farm is not a safe place to live, with a bear prowling about it."
"Do you want me to go and tell Mr. Green?" Grunty inquired.
"_You?_" his mother exclaimed. "No, indeed! You stay right here with me!
Don"t you dare stir out of this yard!" And to Grunty"s astonishment, Mrs. Pig bowled him right over, to show him that she meant what she said.
He jumped to his feet in a jiffy. And he was all ready to slink away into a corner of the yard; but his mother bade him wait.
"This bear--" she said--"what did he look like?"
X
A QUEER BEAR
Grunty Pig"s little eyes fell away from his mother"s when she asked him what the bear looked like--the bear that had chased him.
"Er--he was whitish, with brown spots, like Johnnie Green"s dog," said Grunty; "and--er--he had a long tail like the old horse Ebenezer"s; and he had six legs."
Mrs. Pig suddenly made a most peculiar sound. It couldn"t be called a squeal, nor a grunt, nor a gurgle, nor a gasp. It was a little like all four. And springing clumsily upon her son, Mrs. Pig upset him before he could dodge her.
Grunty Pig began to whimper. "What have I done?" he whined.
"You"ve deceived me!" his mother cried. "You haven"t seen a bear. You"ve never seen a bear in all your life."
"Ouch," Grunty howled, as his mother sent him sprawling once more. "I didn"t mean any harm. I was only having fun with you."
"Well," said his mother. "Turn about is fair play. I"ll have a little fun with _you_, now."
Mrs. Pig gave her wayward son such a punishing that he remembered it all the rest of that day. At least, he stayed at home. And Mrs. Pig dared hope that at last she had cured him of two bad habits--running away and telling fibs.
The next day, however, the fields called again to Grunty Pig. They called so plainly that he couldn"t resist answering.
"I"ll slip away for just a little while," he said to himself. "If I"m not gone long no one will miss me." So when his mother was taking a nap he stole through the hole in the fence. "I"ll be back before she wakes up," he chuckled.
In the garden, up the lane, through the pasture he made his way. And he enjoyed his holiday to the full--until he remembered suddenly that he had been gone a long time--a much longer time than he had planned to spend away from the farmyard.