"Tell us what's wrong," urged Mother Grunty rather sharply.
"Oh, Mamma! Pinky is hung up! She's hung up in the oak tree!" she finally managed to say.
"What do you mean?" the two asked in one breath, as they hurried in the direction of the old oak. But when they came nearer the tree, they both gasped in surprise. The question had answered itself.
"What do you mean, Pinky! What do you mean! Haven't I always told you not to climb trees! Now, how ever are you expecting to get down!" scolded Mother Porky.
But Mother Grunty could do nothing but laugh and laugh and laugh. "Guess you won't need to scold her. She is taking her punishment right now," she said.
And if you could have seen Pinky, you would have laughed with Mother Grunty and you would have agreed with her too. Swinging from an old stub of a dead limb was Pinky Porky. Her pretty new skirt of stout tan kindergarten cloth was holding firm in spite of the fact that the old limb had poked a large hole through it, just above the deep hem. And there she swung, several feet high in the air!
"Get me down! Oh, please do get me down," she begged, and the tears dropped right into the grasses below. "I was only trying to jump to the ground, and my skirt caught on this horrid old limb. Get me down!"
"Well, I don't see how it's to be done," sighed Mother Porky, who was growing very much worried for fear the skirt would tear enough more to let her piglet crash to the ground.
But practical Mother Grunty had hurried back toward the house. In the shed she found a stepladder and a pair of grass shears. These she tugged back to the oak from which still hung Pinky, swinging and swaying and begging and crying.
When Pinky saw Mother Grunty coming along with the ladder and shears, she cried harder than ever, for she knew she could not get onto the ladder, and she didn't know what Mother Grunty meant to do with those large sharp-looking shears.