"Bur-r-r! Whew! Ice cream!" exclaimed Curly, the little piggie boy, one morning, as he hopped¹ out of his bed in the clean straw and ran to the head of the stairs to see if breakfast was ready. "It's cold! Terrible cold!"  
"Of course it is," agreed Flop², his brother. "It will soon be winter and time for chestnuts³ and popcorn⁴ and sliding down hill and all that. Of course it's cold."
 
"I hope there is some warm water to wash in," went on Curly.
 
"Warm water! What's that!" cried his papa from the next room. "Nonsensicalness! Cold water is better for you. It will make your skin nice and rosy⁵. Wash in cold water."
 
So Curly, whether he wanted to or no, had to sozzle and splash himself all over in cold water, and really it did him good, for it made him feel nice and warm and made his ears and nose as red as a pink flannel⁶ blanket.
 
Then the two piggie boys were ready for breakfast, and they had hot corn meal cakes, with sour-milk and maple⁷ syrup⁸ sprinkled on them, and eggs, with the shells taken off, and warm milk and all things like that.
 
Then it was time for Curly to go to school, but as for Flop, he had not yet been vaccinated⁹, and so he could not go to blackboard classes and learn how to add two and two together and make a mud pie of them, or how to write his name with red chalk that made blue marks.
 
"What are you going to do while I'm at school?" asked Curly of his little piggie brother, who was playing in the front yard.
 
"Oh, I think I'll build myself a little house out of corncobs," said Flop, "and then I'll go over and tell Jennie Chipmunk¹⁰ that she can put her rag doll to sleep in it."
 
"Fine!" cried Curly. "And when I come home from school I'll bring you each a lollypop."
 
So Curly put on his warm checker-pattern coat and stuck his paws in little red mittens¹¹, for it was quite cold that morning, and off he went to school.
 
But his brother, who had to stay home because he was not vaccinated, looked out in the yard, and pretty soon he said:
 
"Oh, I guess I'll go out and take a walk. Maybe I can find something or have an adventure."
 
So out Flop walked in the yard, and pretty soon, in a little while, not so very long, he came to a place where there was something that looked like a black stone with yellow marks on it.
 
"That's just what I'm looking for," said Flop, as he saw the queer stone. "I heard my mamma saying the other day that she needed some weight to keep the kitchen door from blowing shut. This stone will be the very thing for her."
 
So over he ran to where he saw the thing that looked like a stone, and he picked it up, no matter if it was cold. For there was frost on the ground—white frost that made everything look as though a little shower of snow had fallen—and everything was cold and............