“Now, mother,” said Charlie (after the grandparents had seen and admired the baby, and they had drunk a cup of tea in honor of his arrival), “I want you to go and see my pig, and the rabbits. You don’t know how piggy has grown. Mrs. Rhines told me it would make him grow to wash him; so every Monday, when she had done washing, I put him in the tub, and washed him, and the black on him is just as black as ink, and the white as white as snow. I have made him a nest in the woods, and he goes there every night and sleeps.”
It was not the custom in those days to put pigs in pens and keep them there; they let them run about the door, and feed in the pasture with the cattle, only putting them up in the fall to fatten; or when they bought a strange one in the spring, they shut him up till he got tame.
“Mother, would you believe that a pig knew anything? I’ve taught him to follow me all round, just like a dog, and come running out of the woods when I call him. I’ve named him Rover; and don’t you think he knows when the tide is down just as well as I do; then he goes to the beach, and digs clams with his nose; he never goes a clamming at high water. When I am fishing for flounders he will sit by me till I pull up a fish, and then he will swallow it in no time; sometimes I say, ‘Rover, you can’t have that; it is for the house;’ and he will look so wishful I have to give it to him.”
“I never heard of such a pig before, Charlie; I expect you will learn him to play with sea ducks.”
“I never thought of that, mother; I don’t believe but I will. Mother, you know Fred Williams gave me some rabbits?”
“Yes.”
“Well, they have got young ones. O, they are the prettiest little things that ever were; come and see them;” and, getting her by the hand, he drew her out of doors.
“Mother,” he said, “it was not altogether to see the pig that I got you out here.”
“I thought as much, Charlie.”
“Well, sit down on this nice log; I want to tell you what good people Captain Rhines and his wife are; you don’t know how good they are.”