"Would you like to look inside?" asked the largest pig.
Ellen said she would.
She slipped from the gander and the pigs made way for her to go in; but she only looked through the doorway, without entering. The littlest pig was seated at a table eating beef fat as fast as he could. Ellen did not think he ate very nicely.
"It's a dear little house," she repeated.
Then she looked about her. At the window of one of the other houses she caught a glimpse of a head. It looked like a cat's head.
"Who live in all these other houses?" she asked.
"Well, in that brick house lives another pig," answered the pig they called Middling. "Sometimes he comes to see us, but he doesn't have very much to do with us, because he's in a story; a real story you know, and we're only in a rhyme."
"What story is he in?" asked Ellen.
"The story of the wolf that huffed and puffed and blew the house in. He had two brothers, and one built a house of leaves and one built a house of straw, and the wolf came and blew their houses in and ate them up, but this one built his house of bricks, so when the wolf came to it—"