"But what are you going to do with him?" queried Bettie.
"Oh, I'll just slip around to the kitchen door--if I ever get that far--and ask Charles to take care of him."
"Charles won't be home," said Sallie. "That's the time of day he goes to the station to get the bread."
"Then I'll take him up to my room," said Mabel, whose pet was now quite satisfied in her arms. "Perhaps you could bring up a cup of milk for him."
"Mabel never comes home empty handed," laughed Marjory. "And she isn't particular what she brings, as long as it's alive."
"Won't Isabelle be pleased?" laughed Maude.
"Lend him to me, Mabel. I'll put him in Miss Woodruff's bed."
"No you won't. I'm not going to have him abused."
"Well, beware of Isabelle," giggled Marjory.
Forewarned is forearmed. Mabel succeeded in slipping the pig into her bedroom closet without disturbing Isabelle who was busy writing what she was pleased to call "a poem." She sent them, as she confided to Mabel, to her friend Clarence. Of course, when Isabelle had a pencil in her hand and that faraway look in her eye she was not likely to notice mere pigs.
Sallie had contrived a nursing bottle for the infant. Mabel, seated on the closet floor, succeeded in feeding her charge and presently made a nest for him by dumping the stockings out of her round mending basket; but to her surprise the pig, not being built that way, refused to curl. His tail curled beautifully but the rest of him wouldn't. In no way, in fact, was he as accommodating an animal as a kitten or even a puppy.
"If he'd only just _cuddle_," groaned Mabel, "he'd be so much more comfortable to live with."
It was somewhere about midnight when Isabelle became aware of the pig. Mabel had been aware of him for a great many sleepless hours. Either he had had too much to eat or not enough. Perhaps he was only lonesome. At any rate he was quiet only when Mabel held him close to her own warm body and kept one or more of her fingers in his mouth. She had spent part of the night on the floor among the shoes; but the floor was hard and Mabel was sleepy; so finally she had crept into her own bed and taken the infant pig with her.
But nothing she could do seemed to please him. His squeals became louder and louder and more and more frequent. At last one of his very best squeals escaped from under the bedclothes.