"Oh!" she cried, as she leaped out of the way. "I'll get you something to eat, and then you won't have to take me," and out into the kitchen she ran, with the mumpy baboon after her. All Pinky saw on the table was a lemon, and, thinking the baboon might like lemonade, she caught hold of it, cut it open with a knife, and then—
Well, that baboon made a jump for her, and, as he did so, Pinky accidentally squeezed the lemon. Now, as everybody knows, when you have the mumps, if a person even says "pickles," or "vinegar," or "lemons" to you, it makes your throat all pucker up and pain you like anything, and you can't even seem to swallow. Mumps and sour things don't seem to go together.
And when the sour lemon juice got in the baboon's mouth and eyes, and some trickled down on his mumpy throat. Oh, wow! if you will excuse me saying so.
"Bur-r-! Scumpf! Fuffphmn, Xzvbgetyriep! Bfrewcript! Xvbnhytrwewqauitopekgsteredse!" cried that baboon, and no one could understand what he said, not even a phonograph, for you see his mouth and throat were nearly closed up by the puckery lemon.
And of course he couldn't eat Pinky, for he could not even swallow some slippery elm, which as everybody knows, is the slipperiest thing there is.
"B-r-r-r!" cried the baboon again.
"Zyxwvutsrqponmlkjihgfedcba!" and he said the alphabet backward. Then, holding his mumpy jaws in both paws and winding his red tail around his blue nose, out of the house he ran, leaving the little piggie girl safe. And her mamma saw the baboon running away, and, without even stopping for the spool of thread, she came home and felt very badly that Pinky had been frightened.
"But you were very brave to hand the mumpy baboon a lemon," she said, and I think so, too, for it was just the right thing.
And next, in case the fire shovel doesn't burn a hole in the tablecloth and let the sugar run out and catch cold, I'll tell you about the piggies and Santa Claus.