—Stuart leapt the low wall, and made a dash for a group of sheds huddled in the farmhouse yard.
“Come along!” he cried; and helter-skelter, through the icy sting of rain, they followed his lead.
... Something enormous hurled itself impotently against the wooden door, as they slammed it behind them.
“It’s a pig. I saw it,” gasped Peter. Her hand fumbled for the latch, could not find it; small wonder, since it existed on the further side of the door. The latter opened inwards. Peter leant against it the full weight of her body: “Help! it’s big and black and bulging—and it’s coming in!”
“Let it,” quoth Stuart indifferently. “Who are we, to object to a respectable old sow?”
But Merle, sitting exhausted in the trough, avowed a firm refusal to share this harbour of refuge with aught whatsoever in the pork line. So Stuart took Peter’s place at the door; and she sank into the trough beside Merle, and through the dim light watched with breathless interest the fierce encounter between man and beast, divided only by a thin partition of wood. Again and yet again did the ungainly monster hurl its quivering bulk to the assault, till the insecure building rocked and shook. Disgusted snortings and gruntings mingled pleasantly with the lash of the rain, and the distant chime of church-bells from Carn Trewoofa, six miles to the south from this clump of moorland huts and farms.
“My—sympathies—are all—with—the—pig,” jerked out Stuart, holding his own against terrific odds. “After all, it is her sty. An English pig’s sty is her castle.”
Chorus of indignant assent from the pig.
And then Merle was suddenly seized by an uncontrollable fit of laughter.
“Peter, it’s Sunday afternoon, first Sunday in the month; and our At Home day at Lancaster Gate. Did your little granddaughter’s frock come from Paris, chère Madame? mais tout à fait charmante.”