“Are these your pigs—these nasty beasts?”
Jake scratched his head slowly, and grinned. “I expect they be; but they air kinder dressed up,” he said. “I heard the old one carryin’ on all this mawnin’; but I didn’t know the litter had strayed clean over here to school,” and he chuckled.
“Take the insufferable creatures out of here!” commanded Miss Olaine. “And I believe you knew something about this disgusting exhibition of Tom-foolery!”
“Eh? No, ma’am! I didn’t have nothin’ to do with it,” declared Jake. “And I’ll have to go home for a bag to put them in——”
“Get them out of this room at once!” cried Miss Olaine. “I cannot stand this another minute.”
Hysteria was threatening again. Jake drew a handful of corn from his pocket. The little pigs were just about big enough to begin to eat corn. He dropped a few kernels on the platform, trailed it along to the door of the small room, and then threw the rest of the corn inside. In two minutes the last curly-cued tail disappeared within, and Jake closed the door on them.
“You kin come down, ma’am,” he said, with a chuckle. “I’ll go home for a bag, and I’ll step into that room through the winder—it’s open—and gather ’em all up.”
“They must have been put in at that window,” remarked Miss Olaine, suspiciously, and breathing heavily after sitting down again. “What do you know about it, sir?”
“Nothing a-tall—I assure ye,” chuckled Jake.
“Those horrid beasts could not have got into that open window without help,” snapped the teacher.