"It didn't sound like a cat to me," said Fergus.
Grandfather, without a word, opened his penknife. Fergus and he turned the sofa over, and Grandfather slit the under covering where it had been sewed up after Jeremiah had been rescued. Through the hole appeared the head of a pig. Grandfather and Fergus stood back while the pig struggled to free himself. Finally succeeding, it trotted away to its pen.
Grandfather and Fergus looked at one another, at first too surprised to speak.
"Do you suppose," said Grandfather at last, "that the pig got into the sofa and carried it off, or the sofa came out and swallowed the pig?"
"I give up," said Fergus, scratching his head.
Grandfather pondered a while and then looked at Hortense.
"It's a curious thing, Fergus, but all these things began to happen when Hortense came. Do you suppose she is responsible?"
He looked so grave that Hortense couldn't tell whether or not he was joking. Fergus, too, looked very grave.
"Still," said Fergus, "she's a pretty small girl to carry a sofa from the parlor to the barn and put a pig inside and sew him up."
"That's true," said Grandfather, nodding gravely. "We'll have to think of some one else. Perhaps it's Uncle Jonah," he added as Uncle Jonah at that moment came slowly around the corner of the barn.