Pig-Betty
By Mrs. Molesworth
PART I.
I AM going to tell you a story that mother told us. We think mother's stories far the most interesting and nicest of any we hear or read. And we are trying to write them all down, so that our children, if ever any of us have any, may know them too. We mean to call them "Grandmother's Stories." One reason why they are nice is, that nearly all of them are real, what is called "founded on fact." By the time our children come to hear them, mother says her stories will all have grown dreadfully old-fashioned, but we tell her that will make them all the nicer. They will have a scent of long-ago-ness about them, something like the faint lavendery whiff that comes out of mother's old doll-box, where she keeps a few of the toys and dolls' clothes she has never had the heart to part with.
The little story, or "sketch"—mother says it isn't worth calling a "story"—I am going to write down now, is already a long-ago one. For it isn't really one of mother's own stories; it was told her by her mother, so if ever our book comes to exist, this one will have to have a chapter to itself and be called "Great-grandmother's Story," won't it? I remember quite well what made mother tell it us. It was when we were staying in the country one year, and Francie had been frightened, coming through the village, by meeting a poor idiot boy who ran after us and laughed at us in a queer silly way. I believe he meant to please us, but Francie's fright made her angry, and she wanted nurse to speak to him sharply and tell him to get away, but nurse wouldn't.
"One should always be gentle to those so afflicted," she said.
When we got home we told mother about it, and Francie asked her to speak to nurse, adding, "It's very disagreeable to see people like that about. I think they should always be shut up, don't you, mother?"
"Not always," mother replied. "Of course, when they are at all dangerous, likely to hurt themselves or any one else, it is necessary to shut them up. And if they can be taught anything, as some can be, it is the truest kindness to send them to an asylum, where it is wonderful what patience and skill can sometimes make of them. But I know about that boy in the village. He is perfectly harmless, even gentle and affectionate. He has been at a school for such as he, and has learnt to knit—that is the only thing they could succeed in teaching him. It was no use leaving him there longer, and he pined for home most sadly. So as his relations are pretty well off, it was thought best to send him back, and he is now quite content. I wish I had told you about him. When you meet him again you must be sure to speak kindly—they say he never forgets if any one does so."
