"Oh dear!" cried Curly one morning, before his papa, Mr. Twistytail, the pig gentleman, had started for work. "Oh dear, how dreadful I feel!"  
"Why, what is the matter?" asked his papa, as he looked in the back of the shiny dishpan to see if his collar was on straight.
 
"Oh, my arm hurts so!" went on Curly. "It all seems swelled¹ up, and it has a lump under it and I don't feel a bit good. Oh dear!"
 
"It's his vaccination²," said his mamma. "It is beginning to 'take' now, and it pains him."
 
"What is beginning to 'take', mamma?" asked Curly. "It is beginning to take the pain away? Because if it isn't I wish it was. Oh dear!"
 
"It will soon be better," said Mrs. Twistytail. "Would you like some nice yellow cornmeal ice cream, or some lollypops, flavored with sour milk?"
 
"Neither, mamma," answered the piggie boy. "But I would like something to amuse me."
 
"All right," answered the pig lady. "Then I'll send Flop³ Ear down to the store to get you a toy. Come Floppy," she called, "go and get something with which to amuse your brother," for you see Flop hadn't yet been vaccinated⁴, and his arm was not sore.
 
"What would you like?" asked Flop of his brother. "Shall I get you a mouth organ, or a kite, so you can fly away up to the clouds?"
 
"Neither one," said Curly. "I want a spinning top that I can make go around when I lie down in bed. And I want it to make music and jump around on a plate and slide on a string and all things like that."
 
"All right," said Flop Ear. "I'll try to get it for you."
 
So he went down to the eleven-and-six-cent store to buy a spinning top for his brother. And he found it, too. It was a top all painted red and blue and yellow and green, and when you wound it up, and pressed a spring, it spun⁵ around and around as fast as anything, making soft and low music like the wind blowing through the trees on a summer night, and sending the mosquitoes all sailing away to the north pole.
 
"I know Curly Tail will like this," said Flop Ear.
 
So the store man wrapped the top up for him in a nice piece of blue paper, tied with a pink string, just the kind they have in the drug store, and Flop started back with the top to amuse his little sick, vaccinated brother.
 
And when Curly saw that top, all colored red and green, and blue and yellow and skilligminkpurple, as it was, he felt better at once, and, sitting up in bed, he began to spin it on a nice smooth board that his brother brought up from the woodpile for him.
 
Around and around on the board spun the top, looking like a pinwheel on the night before Fourth of July, and Curly's sore arm began to feel better all at once.
 
Then Flop started to run down in the yard to play hop⁶ scotch⁷ with
Peetie and Jackie Bow Wow, t............