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“Pig,” interjected Mary Sadgrove, softly.

“Yes, yes!” ejaculated Harvey, “so ’twas! Do you know any French lingo?”

“O yes,” declared her mother, “Mary knows it very well,”

“Ah,” sighed the higgler.”I don’t, although I been to France. And I couldn’t do it now, not for luck nor love. You learnt it, I suppose. Well, this yoossar wants to borrow my rifle, but of course I can’t lend him. So he taps on this horrible pig he’d drawn, and then he taps on his own head, and rolls his eyes about dreadful! ‘Mad?’ I says. And that was it, that was it. He’d got a pig on his little farm there what had gone mad, and he wanted us to come and shoot it; he was on leave and he hadn’t got any ammunition. So Hubert Luxter he says ‘Come on, some of you,’ and we all goes with the yoossar and shot the pig for him. Ah, that was a pig! And when it died it jumped a somersault just like a rabbit. It had got the mange, and was mad as anything I ever see in my life; it was full of madness. Couldn’t hit him at all at first, and it kicked up bobs-a-dying.’Ready, present, fire!’ Hubert Luxter says and bang goes the six of us, and every time we missed him he spotted us and we had to run for our lives.”

As Harvey looked up he caught a glance of the girl fixed on him. She dropped her gaze at once and, turning away, walked off to the house.

“Come and take a look at the meadow,” said Mrs. Sadgrove to him, and they went into the soft smooth meadow where the black pony was grazing. Very bright and green it was, and very blue the sky. He sniffed at the pink rose in his buttonhole, and determined that come what may he would give it to Mary if he could get a nice quiet chance to offer it. And just then, while he and Mrs. Sadgrove were strolling alone in the soft smooth meadow, quite alone, she suddenly, startlingly, asked him: “Are you courting anybody?”

“Beg pardon, ma’am?” he exclaimed.

“You haven’t got a sweetheart, have you?” she asked, most deliberately.

Harvey grinned sheepishly: “Ha, ha, ha,” and then he said, “No.”

“I want to see my daughter married,” the widow went on, significantly.

“Miss Mary!” he cried.

“Yes,” said she; and something in the higgler’s veins began to pound rapidly. His breast might have been a revolving cage and his heart a demon squirrel.”I can’t live for ever,” said Mrs. Sadgrove, almost with levity, “in fact, not for long, and so I’d like to see her settled soon with some decent understanding young man, one that could carry on here, and not make a mess of things.”

“But, but,” stuttered the understanding young man, “I’m no scholar, and she’s a lady. I’m a poor chap, rough, and no scholar, ma’am. But mind you …”

“That doesn’t matter at all,” the widow interrupted, “not as things are. You want a scholar for learning, but for the land …”

“Ah, that’s right, Mrs. Sadgrove, but …”

“I want to see her settled. This farm, you know, with the stock and things are worth night upon three thousand pounds.”

“You want a farmer for farming, that’s true, Mrs. Sadgrove, but when you come to marriage, well, with her learning and French and all that … !”

“A sensible woman will take a man rather than a box of tricks any day of the week,” the widow retorted.”Education may be a fine thing, but it often costs a lot of foolish money.”

“It do, it do. You want to see her settled?”