I had the best fun that ever was, all that day and the next day, taking care of that dear little pig. I gave him one of my coats for a bed, and fed him on milk, and took him out of the trunk every little while for exercise. Nobody goes into my room very often, except the girl to make the bed, and when she came I shut up the trunk, and she never suspected anything. I got a whole coal-scuttleful of the very best mud, and put it in the corner of the room for him to play in, and when I heard Bridget coming, I meant to throw the bedquilt over it, so she wouldn't suspect anything.
After I had him two days I heard mother say, "Seems to me I hear very queer noises every now and then up-stairs." I knew what the matter was, but I never said anything, and I felt so happy when I thought what a good boy I was to raise a pig for my dear father.
Bridget went up to my room about eight o'clock one evening, just before I was going to bed, to take up my clean clothes. We were all sitting in the dining-room, when we heard her holler as if she was being murdered. We all ran out to see what was the matter, and were half-way up the stairs when the pig came down and upset the whole family, and piled them up on the top of himself at the foot of the stairs, and before we got up Bridget came down and fell over us, and said she had just opened the young masther's thrunk and out jumps the ould Satan himself and she must see the priest or she would be a dead woman.
You wouldn't believe that, though I told them that I was raising the pig to sell it and give the money to father, they all said that they had never heard of such an abandoned and peremptory boy, and father said, "Come up-stairs with me and I'll see if I can't teach you that this house isn't a pig-pen." I don't know what became of the pig, for he broke the parlor window and ran away, and nobody ever heard of him again.
I'd like to see that boy James. I don't care how big he is. I'd show him that he can't go on setting good examples to innocent boys without suffering as he deserves to suffer.
[GOING TO BE A PIRATE.]
I don't know if you are acquainted with Tom McGinnis. Everybody knows his father, for he's been in Congress, though he is a poor man, and sells hay and potatoes, and I heard father say that Mr. McGinnis is the most remarkable man in the country. Well, Tom is Mr. McGinnis's boy, and he's about my age, and thinks he's tremendously smart; and I used to think so too, but now I don't think quite so much of him. He and I went away to be pirates the other day, and I found out that he will never do for a pirate.
You see, we had both got into difficulties. It wasn't my fault, I am sure, but it's such a painful subject that I won't describe it. I will merely say that after it was all over, I went to see Tom to tell him that it was no use to put shingles under your coat, for how is that going to do your legs any good, and I tried it because Tom advised me to. I found that he had just had a painful scene with his father on account of apples; and I must say it served him right, for he had no business to touch them without permission. So I said, "Look here, Tom, what's the use of our staying at home and being laid onto with switches and our best actions misunderstood and our noblest and holiest emotions held up to ridicule?" That's what I heard a young man say to Sue one day, but it was so beautiful that I said it to Tom myself.