"Uff! Uff!" grunted Squinty, getting up and going over to one of the bags of sand. "Maybe that is good to eat!" he thought. "If it is I will take a bite. I am hungry."
"Oh, look at that pig!" suddenly called one of the men in the balloon basket.
"Sure enough, it is a pig!" exclaimed the other. "And what a comical little chap he is!" he went on. "See the funny way he looks at you."
At that moment Squinty looked up, as he often did, with one eye partly closed, the other open, and with one ear cocked frontwards, and the other backwards.
"Say, he's a cute one all right," said the first man. "Let's take him along."
"What for?" asked his friend. "We'd only have to toss out as much sand as he weighs so we could go up."
"Oh, let's take him along, anyhow," insisted the other. "Maybe he'll be a mascot for us."
"Well, if he's a mascot, all right. Then we'll take him. We need some good luck on this trip."
| The next moment Squinty felt himself lifted off the ground. |
Squinty did not know what a mascot was. Perhaps he thought it was something good to eat. But I might say that a mascot is something which some persons think brings them good luck. Often baseball nines, or football elevens, will have a small boy, or a goat, or a dog whom they call their mascot. They take him along whenever they play games, thinking the mascot helps them to win. Of course it really does not, but there is no harm in a mascot, anyhow.