“Ask him. We did not give him room,” said one.
“No need,” retorted the other. “Who left the gate open?”
“That did we both, this morning, for the cause that there is no fastening.”
“No latch; but a fastening there is. I knotted the rope last night, and so might you this morning. The loss of the porker comes of losing the lamb.”
“My lamb!” was repeated, with every variety of lamentation, by both the damsels. It was too true. For want of a latch, the gate of the enclosure was tied with a rope. The damsels found the tying too troublesome, and merely pulled it after them. Little by little it had swung open. A sharp-set wild cat had stolen in to make choice of a meal, and run out again with the pet lamb. The master had followed the lamb, and the porker made the best of his opportunity, and followed the master. Then ensued the hue and cry which drove the beasts over the poor colt; and, meantime, the scarlet gown, one sleeve of which had been puffed into the fire by Brawn’s hasty exit, was accelerating the smoking of the dried beef which hung from the rafters. A vast unproductive consumption for one morning!
The damsels made nothing of carrying their father home, and, after bathing his ankle, laying him down on his back to study the rafters till they should return from the market. It was a much harder task to go to market; the one without her scarlet and yellow gown, and the other with grief for her lamb lying heavy at her heart.
They found their pigs very trying to their tempers this morning. Instead of killing them, and carrying them to market in that quiet state, as usual, the damsels had resolved to make the attempt to drive them; as, from the abundance of pork in all its forms in the market just now, a sale was very uncertain. To drive pigs along a high road is not a very easy task; what then must it be in a wild country, where it is difficult even to follow their vagaries, and nearly impossible to reclaim them? The Brawnees agreed that to prevent such vagaries offered the only hope of getting to market in time; and one therefore belled the old hog which was to be her special charge, while the other was to promote to the utmost the effect of the bell-music on the younger members of the drove. The task was not made easier by the poor beasts having been very ill-fed. There was little in the coarse, sour prairie grass to tempt them; but patches of juicy green were but too visible here and there where travellers had encamped, feeding their beasts with hay, and leaving the seeds of the perennial verdure which was to spring up after the next rains. Nothing could keep the old hog and the headlong train from these patches, whether they lay far or near; insomuch that the sisters were twenty times tempted to leave their swine to their own devices, and sell no pork that day. But the not selling involved the not buying; and this thought generated new efforts of patience and of skill. When they arrived at the scene of exchange, and cast a glance on Mrs. Dods’s display of cotton garments set off with here and there a muslin cap, and paraphernalia of pink and green; or on a pile of butter which they were not neat-handed enough to rival; or into wicker baskets of crockery, or upon the trader’s ample store of blankets, knives, horn spoons, and plumes of red and blue feathers, they felt that it would indeed have been cruel to be compelled to quit the market without any of the articles that were offered to their choice. Nobody, however, inquired for their pigs. One neighbour was even saucy enough to laugh at their appearance.
“You had better buy a load of my pumpkins,” said Kendall, the surgeon and tavern-keeper. “Your swine will be more fit for market next week, if you feed them on my fine pumpkins in the meanwhile.”
“When we want pumpkins,” said one of them, “we will go to those that have ground to grow them on. You have not bought a field, and grown pumpkins since yesterday, I suppose?”
“By no means. I have a slip of a garden, let me tell you; and, though it is but a slip, it is of rare mellow mould, where the vines strike at every joint as they run. My wife has kept enough for pies for all the travellers that may pass before next spring. One load is bespoken at four dollars; and you will take the other, if you are wise. There are a few gourds with them, too.”