“How ridiculous!” chuckled Tavia, with a toss of her head, and plainly relieved. “Poor Sammy!”
And even then Dorothy had not suspected the secret. Tavia went back to the Hall with her. Everything seemed as calm as could be. And then, the next forenoon, when recitations began in Miss Olaine’s room, the storm broke.
Behind the desk and platform devoted to the teacher’s use was the door of a little retiring room. Soon after the class assembled there were peculiar noises heard in that room. Miss Olaine stood up and looked at the door.
“Who is in that room, young ladies?” she demanded.
Silence—oh, a great deal of silence! You could cut it with a knife.
And the most amazed-looking person in the room was Tavia Travers. Miss Olaine threw open the door with a savage sort of exclamation. The next instant she shrieked shrilly, and hopped into the seat of her own chair, standing upright there and holding her skirts close about her ankles.
“Who did this? Who did such an atrocious thing?” cried the teacher.
Out of the room there ran a cunning little white and black pig—and then another, and another, until the laughing, half-hysterical girls counted five of the little dears.
Each was scrubbed as clean as ever pig before was scrubbed! And their little pink eyes, and sharp noses, and pricked-up ears, and queer little tails, made the cunning little things as pretty as lapdogs.
“Who’d suppose she was afraid of pigs?” Edna Black said afterward. “And they so cute!”