“I know a little love story about a pig that I can repeat, if you wish,” suggested Girlie. “It’s called ‘Piggie’s Courtship.’”
The Wallypug and the Royal Microscopist both said that they should very much like to hear it, and the Crow laughed and said, “Oh, if it’s about a Pig, I daresay you will repeat it very nicely.”
“What do you mean?” asked Girlie.
“Why, ‘birds of a feather flock together,’ and the same remark applies to pigs, I suppose,” he said, chuckling to himself.
Girlie wisely did not take the slightest notice of this rude remark, but stood up and tried to curtsey, as she had been taught to do before beginning a recitation; curtseying in a balloon, though, while it is going up, is a most difficult thing to do, and poor Girlie did not succeed very well in her attempt, for she first stumbled forward into the Wallypug’s arms and then, trying to recover her balance, she fell back and sat plump into the Royal Microscopist’s lap.
They all had a good laugh at her misfortunes, and then Girlie smilingly said that she thought that, under the circumstances, perhaps, she had better sit down to recite, and the others agreeing with her, she sat with one hand holding the side of the car and the other one resting in her lap while she repeated the following story which, as she explained, a young friend had recited at their last School Entertainment just before the Holidays:—
“PIGGIE’S COURTSHIP.
“A black and white pig, who’d been properly taught
To walk and to talk and behave as he ought,
Went out one day,