“Yeh, I ’grees wid you, Janet—pork is ’spensive meat, but it am so sweet ef it’s cooked wid cabbitch an’ seasoned wid pertaters!” Rachel’s smack and the way she rolled her round eyes ceiling-ward caused her audience to laugh merrily at the pantomime.
Rachel ate her breakfast in the kitchen and as she ate, she planned to help Janet with those pigs. Perhaps there would be a chance for a feast of spare ribs and cabbage in the fall.
While Janet and she were repairing the fence directly after breakfast, the former continued her thirst for information.
“Rachel, what did you mean when you said that pigs were hard to raise. What can make them die easy if I feed them all they can eat, and keep them safely in the sty?”
“I diden’ say dey died ‘easy,’ Janet, ’cuz I’ve seen ’em die orful hard! Once hog-cholery gits ’em no one kin say dey dies easy,” was Rachel’s lugubrious reply.
“What I meant to say was, are pigs quick to catch things?”
“It all depen’s on what you hast to cotch. Now I don’ see no spechul reason why dese pigs mus’ get hog-cholery, toomerkolosis ner anything what goes perwailing about the country down Souf’. Ef you-all gives ’em pure air, an’ fattenin’ grub widdout much swill, an’ scrubs the sty once a week, why should dey get complainin’?”
“I’m sure I don’t see why they should, either, Rachel,” admitted Janet, driving a nail so forcibly that it went half through the decayed wood.
“Sam—dat’s my sister’s son, you know, Janet—Sam says he read in a paper, one time, how dem orful slaughter-houses out west feeds doze pigs wid leavin’s f’m dead cattle. Dat’s what makes fer disease, Sam says. Jus’ think of it, Janet! Us smackin’ our lips on roas’ pork what’s raised on sech sickenin’ clean-up affer all the cows and steers and sof’ little lambs, is butchered!”
Janet shivered with disgust at the picture Rachel painted so vividly for her, but Rachel was on the “Stump” and paid no attention to her companion’s tremors.