The click of Jane's hammer began to be heard in November, and hardly a day passed without some music from this "Forge in the Forest." Sir Tom made a permanent station of the workshop, where he spent hours in a comfortable chair, drawing nourishment from the head of his cane and pleasure from watching the girl at the anvil. I suspect that he planted himself in the corner of the forge to safeguard Jane; for he had an abiding fear that she would take fire, and he wished to be near at hand to put her out. He procured a small Babcock extinguisher and a half-dozen hand-grenades, and with these instruments he constituted himself a very efficient volunteer fire department. He made her promise, also, that she would have definite hours for heavy work, that he might be on watch; and so fond was she of his company, or rather of his presence, for he talked but little, that she kept close to the schedule.
Laura had a favorite corner in the forge, where she often turned a hem or a couplet. She was equally dexterous at either; and Sir Tom watched her, too, with an admiring eye. I once heard him say:—
"Milady Laura, it is the regret of me life that I came into the world a generation too soon."
Laura sometimes went away—she called it "going home," but we scoffed the term—and the doldrums blew until she returned. Sir Tom dined with us nearly every evening through the fall and early winter; and when he, and Kate and Tom and the grand-girls, and the Kyrles, and Laura were at Four Oaks, there was little to be desired. The grand-girls were nearly five and seven now, and they were a great help to the Headman. My terrier was no closer to my heels from morning to night than were these youngsters. They took to country life like the young animals they were, and made friends with all, from Thompson down. They must needs watch the sheep as they walked their endless way on the treadmill night and morning; they thrust their hands into hundreds of nests and placed the spoils in Sam's big baskets; they watched the calves at their patent feeders, which deceived the calves, but not the girls; they climbed into the grain bins and tobogganed on the corn; they haunted the cow-barn at milking time and wondered much; but the chiefest of their delights was the beautiful white pig which Anderson gave them. A little movable pen was provided for this favorite, and the youngsters fed it several times a day with warm milk from a nursing-bottle, like any other motherless child. The pig loved its foster-mothers, and squealed for them most of the time when it was not eating or sleeping; fortunately, a pig can do much of both. It grew playful and intelligent, and took on strange little human ways which made one wonder if Darwin were right in his conclusion that we are all ascended from the ape. I have seen features and traits of character so distinctly piggish as to rouse my suspicions that the genealogical line is not free from a cross of sus scrofa. The pig grew in stature and in wisdom, but not in grace, from day to day, until it threatened to dominate the place. However, it was lost during the absence of its friends,—to be replaced by a younger one at the next visit.
"Do your pigs get lost when you are away?" asked No. 1.
"Not often, dear."
"It's only pet pigs that runds away," said No. 2, "and I don't care, for it rooted me."
The pet pig is still a favorite with the grand-girls, but it always runs away in the fall.
Kate loved to come to Four Oaks, and she spent so much time there that she often said:—
"We have no right to that $1200; we spend four times as much time here as you all do in town."