Now Squinty, though he was not the largest of the family of pig children, was by far the smartest. He learned more quickly than did his brothers and sisters, how to run to the trough to eat, when his mother called him, and he learned how to stand up against one side of the pen and rub himself back and forth to scratch his side when a mosquito had bitten him in a place he could not reach with his foot.
In fact Squinty was a little too smart. He wanted to do many things his brothers and sisters never thought of. One day when Squinty and the others had eaten their dinner, Squinty told his brother Wuff-Wuff that he thought it would be a nice thing to have some fun.
Wuff-Wuff said he thought so, too, but he didn't just know what to do. In fact there was not much one could do in a pig pen.
"If we could only get out of here!" grunted Squinty, as he looked out through a crack in the boards and saw the green garden, where pig weed was growing thickly.
"Yes, but we can't," said Wuff-Wuff.
Squinty was not so sure about this. In fact he was a very inquisitive little pig--that is, he always wanted to find out about things, and why this and that was so, and what made the wheels go around, and all like that.
"I think I can get out through that place," said Squinty to himself, a little later. He had found another crack between two boards of the pen--a large crack, and one edge of the board was loose. Squinty began to push with his rubbery nose.
A pig's nose is pretty strong, you know, for it is made for digging, or rooting in the earth, to turn up acorns, and other good things to eat.
Squinty pushed and pushed on the board until he had made it very loose. The crack was getting wider.
"Oh, I can surely get out!" he thought. He looked around; his mother and father and all the little pigs were asleep in the shady part of the pen.