"You should say 'isn't,' not 'ain't,'" corrected his mother.
"But it'll be cooler soon," said Paul. "There's a big thunderstorm coming up. See, around the corner of the mountain. See how black it is now, over the Eagle Rocks" He took her hand in his bramble-scarred little fingers, and led her along, talking proudly of his own virtue. "I've moved Henry's pen today, fresh, so's to get him on new grass, and I put it under the shade of this butternut tree."
They were beside the pen now, looking over the fence at the grotesque animal, twitching his gross and horribly flexible snout, as he peered up at them out of his small, intelligent eyes, sunk in fat, and almost hidden by the fleshy, hairy triangles of his ear-flaps.
"Don't you think Henry is a very handsome pig?" asked Paul.
"I think you take very good care of him," she answered. "Now what is the matter about the oil you can't put on? Doesn't he like it?"
"He hasn't felt it yet. He won't even let me try. Look!" The child climbed over the fence and made a quick grab at the animal, which gave an alarmed, startled grunt, wheeled with astonishing nimbleness, and darted away in a short-legged gallop.
"Look there, that's the way he always does!" said Paul in an aggrieved tone.
Marise considered the pig for a moment. He had turned again and was once more staring at her, his quivering, fleshy snout in the air, a singularly alert expression of attention animating his heavy-jowled countenance.
"Are there any things he specially likes?" she asked Paul.
"He likes to eat, of course, being a pig," said Paul, "and he loves you to scratch his back with a stick."