Down the hill, a little way from Farmer Green's house, a great tree stood beside the road. In the fall, when the nuts were ripe, Johnnie Green often visited the tree. And so did Squirrel. And so, likewise, did that noisy , Jasper Jay. They liked beechnuts—all three. And somehow they got the notion that the beech tree belonged to them—and to nobody else.  
One fine, crisp fall day when Johnnie Green was in school, a fourth nut-lover wandered down the road, stopped right between the wheel tracks, and . It was Grunty Pig. "I smell beechnuts!" he cried with a . And crashing into the light underbrush along the roadside, he began to search among the fallen leaves with his long nose.
 
Soon Grunty came upon a cluster of the three-sided nuts, clinging inside a bur that the frost had split open. He ate the sweet nuts, shells and all. And with many a of delight he grubbed beneath the tree from which the nuts had fallen. His keen nose led him to burs that Johnnie Green had over that very morning, and missed.
 
"I wonder—" said Grunty Pig aloud—"I wonder why nobody ever told me about this beech tree."
 
"Perhaps it was because you are a pig," said a voice right over his head.
 
He looked up. And there on a low branch sat Frisky Squirrel. Grunty96 knew him; he had sometimes seen him around Farmer Green's corncrib.
 
"Of course I'm a ............