The pigs in question were two tall, lank animals, supposed to belong to Bertie Shakespeare Drew’s father, which had been haunting the roadside by the manse for a couple of weeks.  Walter did not want to ride a pig through Glen St. Mary, but whatever Faith Meredith dared him to do must be done.  They tore down the hill and through the village, Faith bent double with laughter over her terrified courser, Walter crimson with shame.  They tore past the minister himself, just coming home from the station; he, being a little less dreamy and abstracted than usual—­owing to having had a talk on the train with Miss Cornelia who always wakened him up temporarily—­noticed them, and thought he really must speak to Faith about it and tell her that such conduct was not seemly.  But he had forgotten the trifling incident by the time he reached home.  They passed Mrs. Alec Davis, who shrieked in horror, and they passed Miss Rosemary West who laughed and sighed.  Finally, just before the pigs swooped into Bertie Shakespeare Drew’s back yard, never to emerge therefrom again, so great had been the shock to their nerves—­Faith and Walter jumped off, as Dr. and Mrs. Blythe drove swiftly by.

“So that is how you bring up your boys,” said Gilbert with mock severity.

“Perhaps I do spoil them a little,” said Anne contritely, “but, oh, Gilbert, when I think of my own childhood before I came to Green Gables I haven’t the heart to be very strict.  How hungry for love and fun I was—­an unloved little drudge with never a chance to play!  They do have such good times with the manse children.”

“What about the poor pigs?” asked Gilbert.

Anne tried to look sober and failed.

“Do you really think it hurt them?” she said.  “I don’t think anything could hurt those animals.  They’ve been the plague of the neighbourhood this summer and the Drews won’t shut them up.  But I’ll talk to Walter—­if I can keep from laughing when I do it.”

Miss Cornelia came up to Ingleside that evening to relieve her feelings over Sunday night.  To her surprise she found that Anne did not view Faith’s performance in quite the same light as she did.

“I thought there was something brave and pathetic in her getting up there before that churchful of people, to confess,” she said.  “You could see she was frightened to death—­yet she was bound to clear her father.  I loved her for it.”

“Oh, of course, the poor child meant well,” sighed Miss Cornelia, “but just the same it was a terrible thing to do, and is making more talk than the house-cleaning on Sunday.  That had begun to die away, and this has started it all up again.  Rosemary West is like you—­she said last night as she left the church that it was a plucky thing for Faith to do, but it made her feel sorry for the child, too.  Miss Ellen thought it all a good joke, and said she hadn’t had as much fun in church for years.  Of course they don’t care—­they are Episcopalians.  But we Presbyterians feel it.  And there were so many hotel people there that night and scores of Methodists.  Mrs. Leander Crawford cried, she felt so bad.  And Mrs. Alec Davis said the little hussy ought to be spanked.”