THE PIG IS IMPORTANT
"My goodness! what are you doing down there, Aggie?" demanded Ruth. "And
who's that with you!"
"I--I got up to get a peach, Ruthie," explained Agnes, rather
stammeringly. "And I asked the boy to have one, too."
Ruth, looking out of the bedroom window, expressed her amazement at this
statement by a long, blank stare at her sister and the white-haired boy.
Agnes felt that there was further explanation due from her.
"You see," she said, "he--he just saved my life--perhaps."
"How is that?" gasped Ruth. "Were you going to eat _all_ those peaches
by yourself! They might have killed you, that's a fact."
"No, no!" cried Agnes, while the boy's face flushed up darkly again. "He
saved me from falling out of the tree."
"Out of the tree? _This_ tree!" demanded Ruth. "How did you get into
it?"
"From--from the window."
"Goodness! you never! And with your bathrobe on!" ejaculated Ruth, her
eyes opening wider.
As an "explainer," Agnes was deficient. But she tried to start the story
all over again. "Hush!" commanded Ruth, suddenly. "Wait till I come
down. We'll have everybody in the house awake, and it is too early."
She disappeared and the boy looked doubtfully at Agnes. "Is she the
oldest sister you spoke of?"
"Yes. That's Ruth."
"She's kind of bossy, isn't she?"
"Oh! but we like to be bossed by Ruthie. She's just like mother was to
us," declared Agnes.
"I shouldn't think you'd like it," growled the white-haired boy. "I hate
to be bossed--and I won't be, either!"
"You have to mind in school," said Agnes, slowly.
"That's another thing," said the boy. "But I wouldn't let another boy
boss me."
In five minutes Ruth was down upon the back porch, too. She was neat and
fresh and smiling. When Ruth smiled, dimples came at the corners of her
mouth and the laughter jumped right out of her eyes at you in a most
unexpected way. The white-haired boy evidently approved of her, now that
he saw her close to.
"Tell me how it happened!" commanded Ruth of her sister, and Agnes did
so. In the telling the boy lost nothing of courage and dexterity, you
may be sure!
"Why, that's quite wonderful!" cried Ruth, smiling again at the boy. "It
was awfully rash of you, Aggie, but it was providential this--this--You
haven't told me his name?"
"Why! I don't know it myself," confessed Agnes.
"And after all he did for you!" exclaimed Ruth, in admonition.
"Aw--it wasn't anything," growled the boy, with all the sex's objection
to being thought a hero.
"You must be very strong--a regular athlete," declared Ruth.
"Any other boy could do it."
"No!"
"If he knew how," limited the white-haired boy.
"And how did you learn so much!" asked Ruth, curiously.
Again the red flushed into his pale face. "Practicin'. That's all," he
said, rather doggedly.
"Won't you tell us who you are?" asked Ruth, feeling that the boy was
keeping up a wall between them.
"Neale O'Neil."
"Do you live in Milton?"
"I do now."
"But I never remember seeing you before," Ruth said, puzzled.
"I only came to stay yesterday," confessed the boy, and once more he
grinned and his eyes were roguish.
"Oh! then your folks have just moved in?"
"I haven't any folks."
"No family at all?"
"No, ma'am," said Neale O'Neil, rather sullenly Ruth thought
"You are not all alone--a boy like you?"
"Why not?" demanded he, tartly. "I'm 'most as old as you are."
"But _I_ am not all alone," said Ruth, pleasantly. "I have the girls--my
sisters; and I have Aunt Sarah--and Mr. Howbridge."
"Well, I haven't anybody," confessed Neale O'Neil, rather gloomily.
"You surely have some friends?" asked Ruth, not only curious, but
sympathetic.
"Not here. I'm alone, I tell you." Yet he did not speak so ungratefully
now. It was impressed upon his mind that Ruth's questions were friendly.
"And I am going to school here. I've got some money saved up. I want to
find a boarding place where I can part pay my board, perhaps, by working
around. I can do lots of things."
"I see. Look after furnaces, and clean up yards, and all that?"
"Yes," said the boy, with heightened interest. "This other one--your
sister--says you have plenty of empty rooms in this big house. Would you
take a boarder?"
"Goodness me! I never thought of such a thing."
"You took in that Mrs. Treble and Double Trouble," whispered Agnes, who
rather favored the suit of the white-haired boy.
"They weren't boarders," Ruth breathed.
"No. But you could let him come just as well." To tell the truth, Agnes
had always thought that "a boy around the house would be awfully
handy"--and had often so expressed herself. Dot had agreed with her,
while Ruth and Tess held boys in general in much disfavor.
Neale O'Neil had stood aside, not listening, but well aware that the
sisters were discussing his suggestion. Finally he flung in: "I ain't
afraid to work. And I'm stronger than I look."
"You _must_ be strong, Neale," agreed Ruth, warmly, "if you did what
Aggie says you did. But we have Uncle Rufus, and he does most
everything, though he's old. I don't just know what to say to you."
At that moment the sound of a sash flung up at the other side of the ell
startled the three young folk. Mrs. MacCall's voice sounded sharply on
the morning air:
"That pig! in that garden again! Shoo! Shoo, you beast! I wish you'd eat
yourself to death and then maybe your master would keep you home!"
"Oh, oh, oh!" squealed Agnes. "Con Murphy's pig after our cabbages!"
"That pig again?" echoed Ruth, starting after the flying Agnes.
The latter forgot how lightly she was shod, and before she was half-way
across the lawn her feet and ankles were saturated with dew.
"You'll get sopping wet, Aggie!" cried Ruth, seeing the bed slippers
flopping, half off her sister's feet.
"Can't help it now," stammered Agnes. "Got to get that pig! Oh, Ruth!
the hateful thing!"
The cobbler's porker was a freebooter of wide experience. The old Corner
House yard was not the only forbidden premises he roved in. He always
dug a new hole under the fence at night, and appeared early in the
morning, roving at will among the late vegetables in Ruth's garden.
He gave a challenging grunt when he heard the girls, raised his head,
and his eyes seemed fairly to twinkle as he saw their wild attack. A
cabbage leaf hung crosswise in his jaws and he continued to champ upon
it reflectively as he watched the enemy.
"Shoo! Shoo!" shouted Agnes.
"That pig is possessed," moaned Ruth. "He's taken the very one I was
going to have Uncle Rufus cut for our Saturday's dinner."
Seeing that the charging column numbered but two girls, the pig tossed
his head, uttered a scornful grunt, and started slowly out of the
garden. He was in no hurry. He had grown fat on these raids, and he did
not propose to lose any of the avoirdupois thus gained, by hurrying.
Leisurely he advanced toward the boundary fence. There was the fresh
earth where he had rooted out of Mr. Con Murphy's yard into this larger
and freer range.
Suddenly, to his piggish amazement, another figure--a swiftly flying
figure--got between him and his way of escape. The pig stopped, snorted,
threw up his head--and instantly lost all his calmness of mind.
"Oh, that boy!" gasped Ruth.
Neale O'Neil was in the pig's path, and he bore a stout fence-picket.
For the first time in his experience in raiding these particular
premises, his pigship had met with a foe worthy of his attention. Four
girls, an old lady, and an ancient colored retainer, in giving chase
heretofore, merely lent spice to the pig's buccaneering ventures.
He dashed forward with a sudden grunt, but the slim boy did not dodge.
Instead he brought that picket down with emphasis upon the pig's snout.
"Wee! wee! wee!" shrieked the pig, and dashed headlong down the yard,
blind to anything but pain and immediate escape.
"Oh! don't hurt him!" begged Ruth.
But Agnes had caught her sister around the neck and was hanging upon
her, weak with laughter. "Did you hear him? Did you hear him?" she
gasped. "He's French, and all the time I thought he was Irish. Did you
hear how plain he said 'Yes,' with a pure Parisian accent?"
"Oh, Neale!" cried Ruth again. "Don't hurt him!"
"No; but I'll scare him so he won't want to come in here again in a
hurry," declared the boy.
"Let the boy alone, Ruth," gasped Agnes. "I have no sympathy for the
pig."
The latter must have felt that everybody was against him. He could look
nowhere in the enemy's camp for sympathy. He dove several times at the
fence, but every old avenue of escape had been closed. And that boy with
the picket was between him and the hole by which he had entered.
Finally he headed for the hen runs. There was a place in the fence of
the farther yard where Uncle Rufus had been used to putting a trough of
feed for the poultry. The empty trough was still there, but when the pig
collided with it, it shot into the middle of the apparently empty yard.
The pig followed it, scrouging under the fence, and squealing
intermittently.
"There!" exclaimed Neale O'Neil. "Why not keep him in that yard and make
his owner pay to get him home again?"
"Oh! I couldn't ask poor Mr. Murphy for money," said Ruth, giving an
anxious glance at the little cottage over the fence. She expected every
moment to hear the cobbler coming to the rescue of his pet.
And the pig did not propose to remain impounded. He dashed to the
boundary fence and found an aperture. Through it he caught a glimpse of
home and safety.
But the hole was not quite deep enough. Head and shoulders went through
all right; but there his pigship stuck.
There was a scurrying across the cobbler's yard, but the Kenway girls
and their new friend did not hear this. Instead, they were startled by a
sudden rattling of hoofs in a big drygoods box that stood inside the
poultry pen.
"What's that?" demanded Neale O'Neil.
"It's--it's Billy Bumps!" shrieked Agnes.
Out of the box dashed the goat. The opening fronted the boundary fence,
beneath which the pig was stuck. Perhaps Billy Bumps took the rapidly
curling and uncurling tail of the pig for a challenging banner. However
that might be, he lowered his head and catapulted himself across the
yard as true as a bullet for the target.
Slam! the goat landed just where it seemed to do the most good, for the
remainder of the pig shot through the aperture in the board fence on the
instant. One more affrighted squeal the pig uttered, and then:
"Begorra! 'Tis ivry last brith in me body ye've knocked out," came from
the other side of the fence.
"Oh, Agnes!" gasped Ruth, as the sisters clung together, weak from
laughter. "That pig can't be French after all; for that's as broad an
Irish brogue as ever I heard!"