“Yes, they’ve got their particular naters good-now,” he remarked initially. “Many’s the rum-tempered pig I’ve knowed.”
“I don’t doubt it, Master Lickpan,” answered Martin, in a tone expressing that his convictions, no less than good manners, demanded the reply.
“Yes,” continued the pig-killer, as one accustomed to be heard. “One that I knowed was deaf and dumb, and we couldn’t make out what was the matter wi’ the pig. ’A would eat well enough when ’a seed the trough, but when his back was turned, you might a-rattled the bucket all day, the poor soul never heard ye. Ye could play tricks upon en behind his back, and a’ wouldn’t find it out no quicker than poor deaf Grammer Cates. But a’ fatted well, and I never seed a pig open better when a’ was killed, and ’a was very tender eating, very; as pretty a bit of mate as ever you see; you could suck that mate through a quill.
“And another I knowed,” resumed the killer, after quietly letting a pint of ale run down his throat of its own accord, and setting down the cup with mathematical exactness upon the spot from which he had raised it—“another went out of his mind.”
“How very mournful!” murmured Mrs. Worm.
“Ay, poor thing, ’a did! As clean out of his mind as the cleverest Christian could go. In early life ’a was very melancholy, and never seemed a hopeful pig by no means. ’Twas Andrew Stainer’s pig—that’s whose pig ’twas.”
“I can mind the pig well enough,” attested John Smith.
“And a pretty little porker ’a was. And you all know Farmer Buckle’s sort? Every jack o’ em suffer from the rheumatism to this day, owing to a damp sty they lived in when they were striplings, as ’twere.”
“Well, now we’ll weigh,” said John.
“If so be he were not so fine, we’d weigh en whole: but as he is, we’ll take a side at a time. John, you can mind my old joke, ey?”