One night, in the piggie house where Mr. and Mrs. Twisty tail lived with their three children, there was a crying noise.  
"Hey! What's that?" asked Curly, one of the piggie boys, as he threw some of the straw from his bed over on the one where his brother Floppy² slept.
 
"Oh, I don't know. Cats howling, I guess," answered Flop¹. "Go to sleep and don't mind 'em."
 
So he and Curly tried hard to go to sleep again, but you know how it is, sometimes, the more you try to close your eyes, and dream, the wider awake you get. It was this way with the two piggie boys, though you can hardly blame them for not sleeping, as the crying noise sounded louder and louder.
 
"That isn't cats," said Curly, after a while.
 
"No," agreed Flop. "I guess it isn't. Sounds more like Baby Pinky crying. I wonder what's the matter?"
 
"Let's get up and look," suggested Curly who always liked to be doing something, even at night. So the two piggie boys crawled softly from their beds and looked out of the door. They saw in the next room their papa scooting around in his bare feet, carrying a kettle of hot water, and then they heard their mamma saying:
 
"There, there now, little one. Your pain will soon be better. Don't cry and wake up the boys."
 
"Oh, we are awake!" exclaimed Curly through the open door of his room.
 
"What's the matter?" asked his brother. "Is somebody sick?"
 
"Baby Pinky is," answered Mrs. Twistytail. "But go to sleep. We'll call you if we want you." The two piggie boys saw their papa getting more hot water, and other things, from the kitchen, and they heard their mamma walking around with their baby sister, and they tried to go to sleep, but they didn't rest much, for they were too anxious.
 
During the night they managed to doze³ off, but still they heard noises through the house, and when it was almost morning, but when the stars were still twinkling, they heard their papa go softly out of the front door. And they heard their mamma say: "Tell the doctor to come as soon as he can, Archibald." You see, Mr. Twistytail's first name was Archibald. And he answered:
 
"Yes, I'll get him soon," and then the two boys heard their papa sort of blowing his nose hard and coughing, as if he had a bad cold. You see, papa pigs feel as badly when their little children get sick as real papas do, every bit.
 
Now in the morning, when the sun was up, there was a busy time at the pig-house. First came Grandfather Squealer⁴, the oldest pig of them all, and he was a very nice gentleman.
 
"You boys must be very good and quiet," he said to Curly and Flop. "For your little sister is very sick, and may have to go to the hospital."
 
"What's a hospital?" asked Curly.
 
"It's a place where they make sick folks get well," answered Grandfather Squealer. "Now, you boys get ready for school. The doctor is still here, and may be for some time."
 
And so Dr. Possum was—up in the room looking after poor sick Pinky. There was something the matter inside her—I didn't know what it was, but anyhow she had to go to the hospital to have it fixed⁵, just as when the clock doesn't go, the jeweler has to put new wheels in it, or fix the old ones.
 
"But I don't want to go to the hospital," squealed⁶ Pinky, when they told her she would have to. "I want to stay home," and she made su............