We almost surrounded him. He edged off towards the house.
"Now we've got him!" cried the crafty Oswald, as the pig got onto a bed of yellow pansies close against the red house wall.
All would even then have been well, but Denny, at the last, shrank from meeting the pig face to face in a manly way. He let the pig pass him, and the next moment, with a squeak that said "There now!" as plain as words, the pig bolted into a French window. The pursuers halted not. This was no time for trivial ceremony. In another moment the pig was a captive. Alice and Oswald had their arms round him under the ruins of a table that had had teacups on it, and around the hunters and their prey stood the startled members of a parish society for making clothes for the poor heathen, that that pig had led us into the very midst of. They were reading a missionary report or something when we ran our quarry to earth under their table. Even as he crossed the threshold I heard something about "black brothers being already white to the harvest." All the ladies had been sewing flannel things for the poor blacks while the curate read aloud to them. You think they screamed when they saw the Pig and Us? You are right.
On the whole, I cannot say that the missionary people behaved badly. Oswald explained that it was entirely the pig's doing, and asked pardon quite properly for any alarm the ladies had felt; and Alice said how sorry we were, but really it was not our fault this time. The curate looked a bit nasty, but the presence of ladies made him keep his hot blood to himself.
When we had explained, we said, "Might we go?"
The curate said, "The sooner the better." But the Lady of the House asked for our names and addresses, and said she should write to our father. (She did, and we heard of it too.) They did not do anything to us, as Oswald at one time believed to be the curate's idea. They let us go.
And we went, after we had asked for a piece of rope to lead the pig by.
"In case it should come back into your nice room," Alice said. "And that would be such a pity, wouldn't it?"
A little girl in a starched pinafore was sent for the rope. And as soon as the pig had agreed to let us tie it round his neck we came away. The scene in the drawing-room had not been long.
The pig went slowly,