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I know, of course, that, beaten at every other point, my critics will take their stand on dietetic grounds. ‘How can you have a pig for your heroine?’ they will ask, with their noses turned up in disgust. ‘See what a pig eats !’ Now I confess that this objection did appear to me to be serious until I went into the matter a little more carefully. Before abandoning poor Lily, and consigning her to everlasting obscurity, it seemed to me that I owed it to her, as a matter of common gallantry, to investigate this charge. An author has no more right than any other man to toy with feminine affections; and having pledged myself to Lily as my heroine, I dared not commit a breach of promise, save on most serious grounds. Into this matter of Lily’s diet I therefore plunged, with results that have surprised myself. I find that Lily is the most fastidious of eaters. Experiments made in Sweden show that, out of 575 plants, the goat eats 449, and refuses 126; the sheep, out of 528 plants, eats 387, and refuses 141; the cow, out of 494 plants, eats 276, and refuses 218; the horse, out of 474 plants, eats 262, and refuses 212; whilst the pig, out of 243 plants, eats 72, and refuses 171. From all these fiery ordeals my heroine, therefore, emerges triumphant, and her critics cut a sorry figure. Theirs is the melancholy fate of all those who will insist on judging from appearances. It is the oldest mistake in the world, and it is certainly the saddest. Many, like Lily, have been judged hastily and falsely, and, as in Lily’s case, the evil thought has clung to them as though it were a charge established, and under that dark cloud they have lived shadowed and embittered lives. Half the pathos of the universe lies just there.

One thing affords me unbounded pleasure. If I take Lily for my heroine after all, I shall be following a noble precedent–Michael Fairless, in The Roadmender, did something very much like it. ‘In early spring,’ she says, ‘I took a long tramp. Towards afternoon, tired and thirsty, I sought water at a little lonely cottage. Bees worked and sang over the thyme and marjoram in the garden; and in a homely sty lived a solemn black pig, a pig with a history. It was no common utilitarian pig, but the honoured guest of the old couple who lived there; and the pig knew it. A year before, their youngest and only surviving child, then a man of five-and-twenty, had brought his mother the result of his savings in the shape of a fine young pig. A week later he lay dead of the typhoid. Hence the pig was sacred, cared for, and loved by this Darby and Joan.

‘”‘E be mos’ like a child to me and the mother, an’ mos’ as sensible as a Christian, ‘e be,” the old man said.’

What a world of illusion this is, to be sure! It takes a good pair of eyes to see through its good-humoured trickery. You see a pig turning this way and that way as he wanders aimlessly about the yard, and you never dream of romance. And yet that pig is none other than Lily! You see another pig in a commonplace sty, and you never dream of pathos; but old Joan wipes a tear from her eye with her apron when she remembers how that pig came into her possession. There is a world of poetry in pig-sties. Yes, and pathos, too, of its kind. For, as I said, Lily is dead. It was this way.

John and Mary are not rich; and a pig is a pig.

‘What about Lily, Mary?’ John asked awkwardly one day. ‘You see, Mary, she’s got to die. If we keep her, she’ll die. And if we sell her, she’ll only die. If we keep her, Mary, she may die of some disease, and we shall see her in pain. If we sell her, she will die suddenly, and feel no pain. And then, Mary,’ he continued slowly, as though afraid to introduce so prosaic an aspect of so pathetic a theme, ‘and then, Mary, if she dies here, look at the loss, for Lily’s a pig, you know! And if we sell her, look at the gain! And with part of the money we can get another pet, and be just as fond of it.’

There were protests and there were tears, but Lily went to market.

Awhile afterwards John came home from the city with a parcel. ‘Mary,’ he said hesitatingly, ‘I’ve brought ye home a bit o’ Lily! I thought I’d like to see how she’d eat.’

Next morning at breakfast they neither of them ate heartily, but they both tasted. There is food that is too sacred for a glut of appetite.

‘Ah, well,’ said John, at last, ‘those who eat Lily will none of them say anything but good of her, that’s one comfort.’

And Mary went silently off to see if she could find another.