Matilda was of an age when thought is action; she slid down from the branches of the medlar tree, and when she clambered back again Tarquin, the huge white Yorkshire boar-pig, had exchanged the narrow limits of his stye for the wider range of the grass paddock. The discomfited Stossen expedition, returning in recriminatory but otherwise orderly retreat from the unyielding obstacle of the locked door, came to a sudden halt at the gate dividing the paddock from the gooseberry garden.
“What a villainous-looking animal,” exclaimed Mrs. Stossen; “it wasn’t there when we came in.”
“It’s there now, anyhow,” said her daughter. “What on earth are we to do? I wish we had never come.”
The boar-pig had drawn nearer to the gate for a closer inspection of the human intruders, and stood champing his jaws and blinking his small red eyes in a manner that was doubtless intended to be disconcerting, and, as far as the Stossens were concerned, thoroughly achieved that result.
“Shoo! Hish! Hish! Shoo!” cried the ladies in chorus.
“If they think they’re going to drive him away by reciting lists of the kings of Israel and Judah they’re laying themselves out for disappointment,” observed Matilda from her seat in the medlar tree. As she made the observation aloud Mrs. Stossen became for the first time aware of her presence. A moment or two earlier she would have been anything but pleased at the discovery that the garden was not as deserted as it looked, but now she hailed the fact of the child’s presence on the scene with absolute relief.
“Little girl, can you find some one to drive away—” she began hopefully.
“Comment? Comprends pas,” was the response.
“Oh, are you French? Êtes vous française?”
“Pas de tous. ’Suis anglaise.”