CHAPTER XVIII
A NEW FRIEND
They spent the morning down at the brook. Shirley was enchanted to be allowed to help build a dam—the height of his ambition, Doctor Hugh whimsically told them. Shirley paddled around in the brook and brought him stones and he laid them in a chain that made a crude dam, both getting very warm and very wet and having a thoroughly enjoyable time of it.
Rosemary had brought the camera and snapped a dozen poses of the sunny-haired Shirley as she gamboled about with her skirts tucked up to her waist, looking like a particularly chubby elf. Doctor Hugh had done something to the camera that would, Rosemary was sure, correct her tendency to overexpose a film and the results fully justified her faith; whether it was due to his manipulation of the "innards" of the camera or his instructions to her, the prints were exceptionally good and clear.
Sarah, of course, devoted her morning to scrubbing the pig. The doctor's shouts of laughter could not persuade her to curtail the ceremony in the slightest detail. She had brought soap and towels and brush with her and she gravely scrubbed and rinsed and dried Bony and put him out in the sun to dry.
"He'll bake," protested Doctor Hugh, when, the pig's bath finished, Sarah arranged him on a dry towel in the sun. "You'll have roast pork, Sarah, if you're not careful."
"No I won't," answered Sarah confidently, straightening the pig's legs for him since he did not offer to move.
"Can't he even grunt?" demanded Doctor Hugh who had never seen an animal so willing to be waited upon.
"Of course he can grunt—" Sarah was indignant. "He can do anything."