Ethel and I went in hand in hand, because her hand sought mine. I can not say that I was afraid.
When we reached the sitting room we could hear the scuttering together with other noises that were not pleasant, and I realized that to metropolitan Minerva the animal must be very terrifying if, indeed, he proved to be what I thought he was.
Minerva had evidently slammed the kitchen door after her, for it was shut.
I opened it and the stark naked scutterer turned out to be a little pig not much bigger than Miss Pussy and as pink and nude as Venus rising from the sea.
The little chap was frantic and he rushed through the dining room into the sitting room and thence to the front porch.
Minerva had been standing there wringing her hands, with her back to the house. It therefore happened that she did not see the innocent little porker coming. His only idea was to get out of doors and away, but he blundered in doing so, for he ran plump into Minerva, who sat down on him as promptly and then in her agitation she rolled off the front steps to the front path, and the squealing piggy, freeing himself from her skirts, ran off down the road.
“Ow, he’s bit me. He’s bit me,” said Minerva, sitting up in the path and rubbing her knee.
I am not entirely at home in natural history, but I do not think it is the habit of little pigs to bite, and I told Minerva so, but she insisted that she was bitten, and nothing would calm her until Mrs. Ethel took her into the kitchen and satisfied her that she had not been bitten at all.
Minerva’s plight had its funny side, and James evidently thought so, for he now came into view and said,
“She’s the most fidgety girl I ever saw. I brought her a present of a little pig and left it in the kitchen for her, and the pig has never been away from its mother before, and it was most as much frightened as Minerva was.”