you, Squinty got his name.

"Humph! Squinty!" exclaimed Mrs. Pig, as she heard what the farmer said.
"I don't know as I like that."

"Oh, it will do very well," answered Mr. Pig. "It will save you thinking
up a name for him. And, after all, you know, he _does_ squint. Not that
it amounts to anything, in fact it is rather stylish, I think. Let him
be called Squinty."

"All right," answered Mrs. Pig. So Squinty it was.

"Hello, Squinty!" called the boys and girls, giving the little pig his
new name. "Hello, Squinty!"

"Wuff! Wuff!" grunted Squinty.

That meant, in his language, "Hello!" you see. For though Squinty, and
his mother and father, and brothers and sisters, could understand man
talk, and boy and girl talk, they could not speak that language
themselves, but had to talk in their own way.

Nearly all animals understand our talk, even though they can not speak
to us. Just look at a dog, for instance. When you call to him: "Come
here!" doesn't he come? Of course he does. And when you say: "Lie down,
sir!" doesn't he lie down? that is if he is a good dog, and minds? He
understands, anyhow.

And see how horses understand how to go when the driver says "Gid-dap!"
and how they stop when he says "Whoa!" So you need not think it strange
that a little pig could understand our kind of talk, though he could not
speak it himself.

Well, Squinty, the comical pig, lived with his mother and father and
brothers and sisters in the farmer's pen for some time. As the days went
on Squinty grew fatter and fatter, until his pink skin, under his white
bristles, was swelled out like a balloon.

"Hum!" exclaimed the farmer one day, as he leaned over the top of the
pen, to look down on the pigs, after he had poured their dinner into the
trough. "Hum! That little pig, with the squinty eye, is getting pretty
big. I thought he was going to be a little runt, but he seems to be
growing as fast as the others."

Squinty was glad when he heard that, for he wanted to grow up to be a
fine, large pig.

The farmer took a corn cob, from which all the yellow kernels of corn
had been shelled, and with it he scratched the back of Squinty. Pigs
like to have their backs scratched, just as cats like to have you rub
their smooth fur, or tickle them under the ears.

"Ugh! Ugh!" grunted Squinty, looking up at the farmer with his comical
eyes, one half shut and the other wide open. "Ugh! Ugh!" And with his
odd eyes, and one ear cocked forward, a