‘Well,’ the President said, ‘these are certainly the specimens which I obtained yesterday. If your uncle will call on me I will return them to him. But it’s a disappointment. Yes, I think you must let me look inside.’
He did. And at the first one he said nothing. At the second he laughed.
‘Well, well,’ he said, ‘we can’t expect old heads on young shoulders. You’re not the first who went forth to shear and returned shorn. Nor, it appears, am I. Next time you have a Sale of Antiquities, take care that you yourself are not “sold”. Good-day to you, my dear. Don’t let the incident prey on your mind,’ he said to Alice. ‘Bless your heart, I was a boy once myself, unlikely as you may think it. Good-bye.’
We were in time to see the pigs bought after all.
I asked Alice what on earth it was she’d scribbled inside the beastly jugs, and she owned that just to make the lark complete she had written ‘Sucks’ in one of the jugs, and ‘Sold again, silly’, in the other.
But we know well enough who it was that was sold. And if ever we have any Antiquities to tea again, they shan’t find so much as a Greek waistcoat button if we can help it.
Unless it’s the President, for he did not behave at all badly. For a man of his age I think he behaved exceedingly well. Oswald can picture a very different scene having been enacted over those rotten pots if the President had been an otherwise sort of man.
But that picture is not pleasing, so Oswald will not distress you by drawing it for you. You can most likely do it easily for yourself.