Breakfast was half an hour later than usual, in consequence of this performance, and Sarah was in a fever of impatience to reach the pig pens. When finally excused from the table, she shot through the door and was back before her mother and sisters had left the dining-room.
Loud sounds of altercation in the kitchen proclaimed her return.
"You can't bring that in here—go away, Sarah Willis!" came Winnie's voice. "Where did you get that dirty beast?"
"He's mine—he's a pig," countered Sarah, who always assumed that Winnie was intensely ignorant in matters of natural history. "Mr. Hildreth gave him to me."
There was the noise of a scuffle, the slam of a door and then Sarah's wail:
"Oh, you've hurt him! And he's sick—you're the most cruel woman I ever knew and I'll tell Mother so!"
Mrs. Willis opened the swinging door into the kitchen and Rosemary and Shirley pressed close behind her. Sarah stood on the back porch, a young pig in her arms, and Winnie occupied the center of the kitchen floor.
"We don't keep our pigs in the parlor—not in this house," said Winnie firmly. "Nor yet in the kitchen—as long as I'm in it."
Rosemary thought then, as she had often thought before, how easily her mother settled differences and with how few words. It took scarcely five minutes for Mrs. Willis to examine the pig and praise his possibilities to Sarah; to suggest a comfortable box in the woodshed as his logical home—where he might have fresh air in abundance and yet be close to Sarah if he needed her attention; and to enlist the sympathies of Winnie—whose bark was always loud and whose bite had never materialized yet—to the extent that she provided a piece of soft flannel to line the box and warm milk to comfort the interior of the little pig.
His pigship was a runt, as Mr. Hildreth had said, and deprived of his fair share of nourishment was bony and far from prepossessing. Rosemary had no desire to touch him, but Shirley was fascinated and she and Sarah put him to bed in the box and covered him up with all the care and devotion they had hitherto showered on dolls. As Richard observed, when he came to tell them he was starting for the Gay farm, even a pig could be killed by kindness.