At last the hamper was bumped down upon a kitchen floor, the lid was opened, and Pigling was lifted out.  He looked up, blinking, and saw an offensively ugly elderly man, grinning from ear to ear.

“This one’s come of himself, whatever,” said Mr. Piperson, turning Pigling’s pockets inside out.  He pushed the hamper into a corner, threw a sack over it to keep the hens quiet, put a pot on the fire, and unlaced his boots.

Pigling Bland drew forward a coppy stool, and sat on the edge of it, shyly warming his hands.  Mr. Piperson pulled off a boot and threw it against the wainscot at the further end of the kitchen.  There was a smothered noise—­“Shut up!” said Mr. Piperson.  Pigling Bland warmed his hands, and eyed him.

Mr. Piperson pulled off the other boot and flung it after the first, there was again a curious noise—­ “Be quiet, will ye?” said Mr. Piperson.  Pigling Bland sat on the very edge of the coppy stool.

Mr. Piperson fetched meal from a chest and made porridge, it seemed to Pigling that something at the further end of the kitchen was taking a suppressed interest in the cooking; but he was too hungry to be troubled by noises.

Mr. Piperson poured out three platefuls:  for himself, for Pigling, and a third-after glaring at Pigling—­ he put away with much scuffling, and locked up.  Pigling Bland ate his supper discreetly.

After supper Mr. Piperson consulted an almanac, and felt Pigling’s ribs; it was too late in the season for curing bacon, and he grudged his meal.  Besides, the hens had seen this pig.

He looked at the small remains of a flitch [side of bacon], and then looked undecidedly at Pigling.  “You may sleep on the rug,” said Mr. Peter Thomas Piperson.

Pigling Bland slept like a top.  In the morning Mr. Piperson made more porridge; the weather was warmer.  He looked how much meal was left in the chest, and seemed dissatisfied—­“You’ll likely be moving on again?” said he to Pigling Bland.

Before Pigling could reply, a neighbor, who was giving Mr. Piperson and the hens a lift, whistled from the gate.  Mr. Piperson hurried out with the hamper, enjoining Pigling to shut the door behind him and not meddle with nought; or “I’ll come back and skin ye!” said Mr. Piperson.

It crossed Pigling’s mind that if he had asked for a lift, too, he might still have been in time for market.

But he distrusted Peter Thomas.

After finishing breakfast at his leisure, Pigling had a look round the cottage; everything was locked up.  He found some potato peelings in a bucket in the back kitchen.  Pigling ate the peel, and washed up the porridge plates in the bucket.  He sang while he worked—­

     “Tom with his pipe made such a noise,
     He called up all the girls and boys—­
     “And they all ran to hear him play,
          “Over the hills and far away!—­”

Suddenly a little smothered voice chimed in—­