“Israel,” said Miss Lucinda, in a hesitating and rather forlorn tone, “I have been thinking,—­I don’t know what to do with Piggy.  He is quite too big for me to keep.  I’m afraid of him, if he gets out; and he eats up the garden.”

“Well, that is a consider’ble swaller for a pig, Miss Lucindy; but I b’lieve you’re abaout right abaout keepin’ on him.  He is too big,—­that’s a fact; but he’s so like a human cre’tur’, I’d jest abaout as lieves slarter Orrin.  I declare, I don’t know no more ’n a taown-haouse goose what to do with him!”

“If I gave him away, I suppose he would be fatted and killed, of course?”

“I guess he’d be killed, likely; but as for fattenin’ on him, I’d jest as soon undertake to fatten a salt codfish.  He’s one o’ the racers, an’ they’re as holler as hogsheads:  you can fill ’em up to their noses, ef you’re a mind to spend your corn, and they’ll caper it all off their bones in twenty-four haours.  I b’lieve, ef they was tied neck an’ heels an’ stuffed, they’d wiggle thin betwixt feedin’-times.  Why, Orrin, he raised nine on ’em, and every darned critter’s as poor as Job’s turkey, to-day:  they a’n’t no good.  I’d as lieves ha’ had nine chestnut rails,—­an’ a little lieveser, ’cause they don’t eat nothin’.”

“You don’t know of any poor person who’d like to have a pig, do you?” said Miss Lucinda, wistfully.

“Well, the poorer they was, the quicker they’d eat him up, I guess,—­ef they could eat such a razor-back.”

“Oh, I don’t like to think of his being eaten!  I wish he could be got rid of some other way.  Don’t you think he might be killed in his sleep, Israel?”

This was a little too much for Israel.  An irresistible flicker of laughter twitched his wrinkles and bubbled in his throat.

“I think it’s likely ’twould wake him up,” said he, demurely.  “Killin’s killin’, and a cre’tur’ can’t sleep over it ’s though ’t was the stomach-ache.  I guess he’d kick some, ef he was asleep,—­and screech some, too!”

“Dear me!” said Miss Lucinda, horrified at the idea.  “I wish he could be sent out to run in the woods.  Are there any good woods near here, Israel?”

“I don’t know but what he’d as lieves be slartered to once as to starve, an’ be hunted down out in the lots.  Besides, there a’n’t nobody as I knows of would like a hog to be a-rootin’ round amongst their turnips and young wheat.”

“Well, what I shall do with him I don’t know!” despairingly exclaimed Miss Lucinda.  “He was such a dear little thing when you brought him, Israel!  Do you remember how pink his pretty little nose was,—­just like a rosebud,—­and how bright his eyes looked, and his cunning legs?  And now he’s grown so big and fierce!  But I can’t help liking him, either.”

“He’s a cute critter, that’s sartain; but he does too much rootin’ to have a pink nose now, I expect;—­there’s consider’ble on’t, so I guess it looks as well to have it gray.  But I don’t know no more ’n you do what to do abaout it.”