Paddy stamped her foot more impatiently still and grew more perplexed.
“Share, and it’s beyond me,” and Patrick fell again to his head-scratching. “If you bought ’em it seems as if they ought to be yours, don’t it?”
Paddy looked round with a worried air, and at that dreadful moment descried Lawrence, in the very act of dodging two small pigs that had escaped their owner and were making tracks back to the wagon as fast as they could go. She signalled to him, and he came up at once.
“I don’t know what’s happened to Newry,” he said, “but every third person seems to have acquired a small pig. I’ve been dodging them for the last half-hour. They’re all over everywhere.”
Jack began to chuckle in a most annoying manner.
“Paddy’s bought fifteen,” he said.
“I haven’t. Be quiet, you—you—great, silly clown.”
“Now, don’t get cross, Paddy,” soothingly; “and you’ve said so many times that you did buy them that it sounds dreadfully like a fib.”
Paddy looked as if she were not quite sure whether to laugh or cry, and Lawrence asked:
“What’s the matter, Paddy? Why does he say you’ve bought fifteen pigs?”