“Oh dear!” thought Squinty, when he heard this.  “So I am to learn more tricks, it seems.  Well, I hope they will all be eating ones.”

“Make him do it again,” suggested Mollie, after a bit.

“No, I haven’t any more apples,” the boy answered.  “And at first I’ll have to make him jump for an apple each time.  After a bit I’ll not give him an apple until he has done all his tricks.  Come on now, Squinty, back to your pen.”

The boy lifted up his pet, and put him back in the pen that had been especially built for the little pig.  As soon as he was in it Squinty ran over to the trough, hoping there would be some sour milk in it.  But there was none.

“You’ve had enough to eat for a while,” said the boy with a laugh.  “Later on I’ll give you your milk.”

“Uff!  Uff!” grunted Squinty, and I suppose he meant he would be glad to have the milk now.  But he got none, so he curled himself up in the clean straw and went to sleep.

When he awakened, he thought at first he was back in the pen at home, and he cried out: 

“Oh, Wuff-Wuff!  Oh, Twisty Tail.  I had the queerest dream!  I thought a boy had me, and that I could jump a rope, and hunt acorns, and do lots of tricks.  But I—!” And then Squinty stopped.  He looked around and found himself all alone in the new pen.  None of his brothers or sisters was near him, and he could not hear his mamma or papa grunting near the feed trough.

“Ha!  It wasn’t a dream, after all,” thought Squinty, a bit sorrowfully.  “It’s all real—­I can do tricks, and a boy has me.”

Every few days after that the boy took Squinty out of his pen, and let him do the rope-jumping and the acorn-hunting tricks.  And it did not take Squinty long to learn to jump the rope when there was no apple on the other side.  The boy would say: 

“Jump over the rope, Squinty!”

And over it the little pig would go.  But if he did not get the apple as soon as he jumped, he did get it afterward, which was just as good.  It was sort of a reward for his tricks, you see.

“Now you must learn a new trick,” said the boy one day.  “I want you to learn how to walk on your hind legs, Squinty.  It is not going to be easy, either.  But I guess you can do it.  And I am going to take the rope off your leg, for I do not believe you will run away from me now.”

So the rope was taken off Squinty’s leg.  And he liked the boy so much, and liked his new home, and the nuts and apples he got to eat were so good, that Squinty did not try to run away.

“Up on your hind legs!” cried the boy, and, by taking hold of Squinty’s front feet, Bob raised his pet up on the hind legs.

“Now stand there!” the boy cried, but when he took away his hands of course Squinty came down on all four legs.  He did not know what the boy meant to have him do.

“I guess I’ll have to stand you in a corner to start with,” the boy said.  “That will brace you up.”