Favouring me with another wink, to which I now paid the keenest heed, Betty went and fetched the lanthorn from the hook inside the door.  Then when she had kindled it, not allowing me any time to ask what she was after, she went outside, and pointed to the great bock of wash, and riddlings, and brown hulkage (for we ground our own corn always), and though she knew that Bill Dadds and Jem Slocombe had full work to carry it on a pole (with another to help to sling it), she said to me as quietly as a maiden might ask one to carry a glove, “Jan Ridd, carr thic thing for me.”

So I carried it for her, without any words; wondering what she was up to next, and whether she had ever heard of being too hard on the willing horse.  And when we came to hog-pound, she turned upon me suddenly, with the lanthorn she was bearing, and saw that I had the bock by one hand very easily.

“Jan Ridd,” she said, “there be no other man in England cud a’ dood it.  Now thee shalt have Larna.”

[Illustration:  277.jpg The Pigs]

While I was wondering how my chance of having Lorna could depend upon my power to carry pig’s wash, and how Betty could have any voice in the matter (which seemed to depend upon her decision), and in short, while I was all abroad as to her knowledge and everything, the pigs, who had been fast asleep and dreaming in their emptiness, awoke with one accord at the goodness of the smell around them.  They had resigned themselves, as even pigs do, to a kind of fast, hoping to break their fast more sweetly on the morrow morning.  But now they tumbled out all headlong, pigs below and pigs above, pigs point-blank and pigs across, pigs courant and pigs rampant, but all alike prepared to eat, and all in good cadence squeaking.

“Tak smarl boocket, and bale un out; wad ’e waste sich stoof as thic here be?” So Betty set me to feed the pigs, while she held the lanthorn; and knowing what she was, I saw that she would not tell me another word until all the pigs were served.  And in truth no man could well look at them, and delay to serve them, they were all expressing appetite in so forcible a manner; some running to and fro, and rubbing, and squealing as if from starvation, some rushing down to the oaken troughs, and poking each other away from them; and the kindest of all putting up their fore-feet on the top-rail on the hog-pound, and blinking their little eyes, and grunting prettily to coax us; as who would say, “I trust you now; you will be kind, I know, and give me the first and the very best of it.”

“Oppen ge-at now, wull ‘e, Jan?  Maind, young sow wi’ the baible back arlway hath first toorn of it, ’cos I brought her up on my lap, I did.  Zuck, zuck, zuck!  How her stickth her tail up; do me good to zee un!  Now thiccy trough, thee zany, and tak thee girt legs out o’ the wai.  Wish they wud gie thee a good baite, mak thee hop a bit vaster, I reckon.  Hit that there girt ozebird over’s back wi’ the broomstick, he be robbing of my young zow.  Choog, choog, choog! and a drap more left in the dripping-pail.”