PAGE 8
The Circus
by
Noel was a highwayman in brown paper gaiters and bath towels and a cocked hat of newspaper. I don’t know how he kept it on. And the pig was encircled by the dauntless banner of our country. All the same, I think if I had seen a band of youthful travellers in bitter distress about a pig I should have tried to lend a helping hand and not sat roaring in the hedge, no matter how the travellers and the pig might have been dressed.
It was hotter than any one would believe who has never had occasion to hunt the pig when dressed for quite another part. The flour got out of Oswald’s hair into his eyes and his mouth. His brow was wet with what the village blacksmith’s was wet with, and not his fair brow alone. It ran down his face and washed the red off in streaks, and when he rubbed his eyes he only made it worse. Alice had to run holding the equestrienne skirts on with both hands, and I think the brown paper boots bothered Noel from the first. Dora had her skirt over her arm and carried the topper in her hand. It was no use to tell ourselves it was a wild boar hunt–we were long past that.
At last we met a man who took pity on us. He was a kind-hearted man. I think, perhaps, he had a pig of his own–or, perhaps, children. Honor to his name!
He stood in the middle of the road and waved his arms. The pig right-wheeled through a gate into a private garden and cantered up the drive. We followed. What else were we to do I should like to know?
The Learned Black Pig seemed to know its way. It turned first to the right and then to the left, and emerged on a lawn.
“Now, all together!” cried Oswald, mustering his failing voice to give the word of command. “Surround him!–cut off his retreat!”
We almost surrounded him. He edged off towards the house.
“Now we’ve got him!” cried the crafty Oswald, as the pig got onto a bed of yellow pansies close against the red house wall.
All would even then have been well, but Denny, at the last, shrank from meeting the pig face to face in a manly way. He let the pig pass him, and the next moment, with a squeak that said “There now!” as plain as words, the pig bolted into a French window. The pursuers halted not. This was no time for trivial ceremony. In another moment the pig was a captive. Alice and Oswald had their arms round him under the ruins of a table that had had teacups on it, and around the hunters and their prey stood the startled members of a parish society for making clothes for the poor heathen, that that pig had led us into the very midst of. They were reading a missionary report or something when we ran our quarry to earth under their table. Even as he crossed the threshold I heard something about “black brothers being already white to the harvest.” All the ladies had been sewing flannel things for the poor blacks while the curate read aloud to them. You think they screamed when they saw the Pig and Us? You are right.
On the whole, I cannot say that the missionary people behaved badly. Oswald explained that it was entirely the pig’s doing, and asked pardon quite properly for any alarm the ladies had felt; and Alice said how sorry we were, but really it was not our fault this time. The curate looked a bit nasty, but the presence of ladies made him keep his hot blood to himself.
When we had explained, we said, “Might we go?”
The curate said, “The sooner the better.” But the Lady of the House asked for our names and addresses, and said she should write to our father. (She did, and we heard of it too.) They did not do anything to us, as Oswald at one time believed to be the curate’s idea. They let us go.