The styless and proper-breakfastless pig, unconscious of this discussion and of its possibilities of development into a good, old-fashioned, neighbourly quarrel, went farther along the village street, still prospecting. There were people about now, men and women, and the door of the Fox-and-Fiddle had been thrown open, and one or two habitués stood within the sanded hall, taking their accustomed morning glass. The pig passed by, and as he passed turned an inquisitive nose towards the scent of stale ale and tobacco. He went forward, and as he went, one man put his head out of the door after him.
"Whose pig's that there?" he said, scratching his ear. "I don't rek'lect seein' that pig before, nowhere."
Another man, standing at the bar, strode to the door and looked forth at the stranger. He was a curious-looking individual, very porcine of appearance, very red and greasy of face and hand, and as bald as man could be. He wore a blue linen apron over his clothes, and from his side a formidable steel dangled from a leather belt. He was, in short, the butcher and pig-killer of the village, and had a professional interest in pigs of all classes. And he surveyed the wandering pig with a keen eye, shook his head, and went back to his ale. He knew every pig in Little St. Peter's—this was a stray-away from somewhere else.
"That's none of ours," he said, with a sniff of disdain. "Jack Longbottom's pig's the only one in Peter's that's in a badly way, and it's a stone heavier nor what that pig is."
"It'll be a poorish pig, then!" remarked the other man. "But Jack were never much of a hand at pig-feeding."
The ownerless pig continued his explorations. He went up a by-lane or two, looked in at the gates of a farmstead here and a farmstead there, but always returned to the street unsatisfied. He managed to get a light lunch off a bowl of potato peelings which a woman threw into the road as he passed, but he was still hungry, and had visions of a trough, liberally furnished with pig-meal. And at noon, being famished, and remembering the gap in Widow Grooby's garden fence, he went recklessly back to it, and finding that William Green had not yet repaired it, pushed his way through and once more entered on work of a destructive nature.
This time Widow Grooby on discovering him made no personal effort to dislodge the intruder. She was doing a day's starching and ironing, being by profession a laundrywoman, and she and her assistant, a young woman from a few doors away, were as throng, said Mrs. Grooby, as Throp's wife, and were not to be interrupted by anything or anybody.
"Blest if that there dratted pig isn't in my garden agen!" exclaimed Widow Grooby. "That's the second time this morning, and now it's at them carrots. Howsumever, it's not a woman's place to take up stray cattle—Martha Jane, slip round to James Burton's, the pinder's, and tell him there's a strange pig on my premises, and I'll thank him to come and take it out at once and put it in the pinfold, which is its lawful place. Them as it belongs to can come and pay for it—and then I'll talk to 'em about paying me for the damage it's done."
The pinder, interrupted at his dinner, came slowly and unwillingly to perform his duty. It was no easy thing to drive a stray pig into the village pound; stray horses, donkeys, and cattle were not so difficult to manage, but a pig was a different thing.
"Whose pig is it?" he inquired surlily, as he followed Martha Jane and munched his last mouthfuls. "If it be that rampagious rorp-scorp o' Green's, why don't they fetch it out theirselves?"