The Piper marked her manner, and showed instant resentment of it. "This here thing was handed me once in part-payment," he explained. "And I ain't been able to get rid of it since. Every single day it's harder to lug around. Because, you see, he's growin'."
At that, the Policeman and the Man-Who-Makes-Faces exchanged a glance full of significance. And both shrugged—the Policeman with such an emphatic upside-down shrug that his shoulders brushed the ground.
Gwendolyn's curiosity emboldened her. "He?" she questioned.
"The pig."
The pig! Gwendolyn's pink mouth opened in amazement. Here was the very pig that she heard belonged in a poke!
The Piper was glowering at Jane, who was rocking gently from side to side, displaying first one face, then the other. "Well, I call that dancing," he declared. And pulling out a small, well-thumbed account-book, jotted down some figures.
Gwendolyn tried to think of something to say—while feeling mistrust toward the Piper, and abhorrence toward the poke and its contents. At last she took refuge in polite inquiry. "When did you come out from town?" she asked.
The Piper grunted rather ill-humoredly (or was it the pig?—she could not be certain), and colored up a little. "I didn't come out," he answered in his surly fashion. Whereupon he fell to fitting a coupling upon the ends of two pipes.
"No?"—inquisitively.
"I—er—got run out."