Next day, as Miss Lavinia sat in her morning-room, going through the weekly accounts, the parlour-maid announced the arrival of a person who said he had come about the pig. Miss Lavinia looked dubiously at the spotlessness of the linen carpet-cover, and asked the parlour-maid if the person's boots seemed clean. As it happened to be a bright frosty morning the parlour-maid considered the person suitable for admittance and brought him in—a shifty-eyed man with a shock of red hair who ducked and scraped at Miss Lavinia as if he experienced a strange joy in meeting her.
"So you have come about the pig which I found!" said Miss Lavinia pleasantly. "You must have been very sorry to lose it."
The caller elevated his eyes to the ceiling, examined it carefully, and then contemplated the inside of his old hat.
"I were sorry, mum," he said. "It were a vallyble animal, that there, mum—it's a well-bred 'un."
"But it was so thin and—and dirty, when it came to me," said Miss Lavinia with emphasis. "Painfully thin, and so very, very dirty. My gardener was obliged to wash it with hot water."
The man scratched his head, and then shook it.
"Ah, I dessay, mum!" he said. "Of course, when a pig strays away from its proper home it's like a man as goes on the tramp—it don't give no right attention to itself. Now, when I had it, ah!—well, it were a picture, and no mistake."
"You shall see it now," said Miss Lavinia, who felt the caller's last words to contain something of a challenge. "You will see we have not neglected it while it has been here."
She led the way out to the stable-yard or to the sty, where the pampered pig was revelling in the best wheat straw and enjoying a leisurely breakfast—even Miss Lavinia had noticed that now that it was certain of its meals, and as many of them as it desired, it ate them with a lordly unconcern. It looked up—the man with the red hair looked down. And he suddenly started with surprise and breathed out a sharp whistle.
"Yes, mum!" he said with conviction. "That's my pig—I know it as well as I know my own wife."