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Now a window at the side of the house opened and a queer head appeared. It was white and hairy and had a long snout and little round eyes. The ears were hidden by a blue sunbonnet tied under the chin. "Oh; it's a pig!" exclaimed Woot. "Pardon me; I am Mrs. Squealina Swyne, wife of Professor Grunter Swyne, and this is our home," said the one in the window. "What do you want?"
I'll dig a hole for us in the pile of snow that I made back of your house and in there we'll hide where the wolf can't find us!" Then the rabbit gentleman, with his strong paws, just made for digging, burrowed a hole in the snow-bank, and as the straw house toppled down, into this hole he crawled with Grunter. "Now I've got you!" cried the wolf, as he blew down the first little pig's straw house.
Uncle Venner's pig was fed entirely, and kept in prime order, on these eleemosynary contributions; insomuch that the patched philosopher used to promise that, before retiring to his farm, he would make a feast of the portly grunter, and invite all his neighbors to partake of the joints and spare-ribs which they had helped to fatten.
Then, leaning upon the fence, he noted each greedy grunter as he wriggled his small tail in keenest enjoyment and cracked the sweet corn. No need was there to count; to the hog-feeder each animal possessed an individuality so marked that in all the drove the absence of the most insignificant was at once detected. So now, as he leaned upon the fence, he cast anxious glances into the dimness beyond.
So the rabbit gentleman and the piggie boy went on and on, until they came to the place where Grunter was to build his house of straw. Uncle Wiggily helped, and soon it was finished. "Why, it is real nice and cozy in here," said Uncle Wiggily, when he had made a big pile of snow back of the straw house to keep off the north wind, and had gone in with the little piggie boy.
"I'm smart I admit it," said I, cooly; "but I can't govern the wind. We'll get in by bedtime." "And nothing to eat aboard," growled Paul. "There's the fish you caught," said I, chuckling. Paul had had abominable luck all day, the only thing he landed being what we Bolderhead boys called a "grunter" a frog-mouthed fish of most unpleasant aspect and of absolutely no use as food.
It gave him a queer feeling among his wheels and spring; and his grunter, by means of which he growled, seemed to be turning over and over. But this did not last long, and while Arthur and Nettie, with their parents, were at dinner in the hotel, the Bear and the Doll had a chance to talk. "How do you like it at this fashionable seaside hotel?" asked the Bear.
"And thus " groaned Adolphe, with thickened speech, not at all charmed with this description of his onset. "And thus," remarked my father, with a bow of the old régime, "you shall be fourth, and you will see the sturdy grunter in all his beauty. Come, my boys! a glass of the cognac all round; then silence, and each to his post.
When I am a man, and can fight my own battles, then it will be time enough to lay claim to my father's realm; and it may be that if I remain in thraldom till that time no one will guess who I am. As a thrall, then, I must work, even though that work be no better than the cleaning of my master's stables and pig styes Get back, you greedy grunter!"
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