F you were writing a book on the comparative civilizations of ancient and modern India, how would you like to have a young woman come bounding up to your window to tell you that the neighbor's pig had eight little pigs?
Horace Caldwell was displeased by the information; not so much by the information as by the method and time of acquiring it. He suspended his pen over the half-written word "indigent" (he had taken great pleasure in writing it, as it was so precisely the word) and looked at the head of Vivian Truce, which vibrated there above the window-box as though it were a flower above the flowers. He did not want to think of the comparative beauties of Vivian's face and nasturtiums; he wanted to think of the comparative attitudes toward women of ancient and modern Hindus. That was the trouble with Vivian. She took you from the thing you wanted to be thinking.
"Eight!" she squealed.
"Eight?" he repeated, helplessly, for the wind played lightly with her hair and through the nasturtium leaves—she made the Hindus remote. That was the trouble with her. She made things remote.
"Eight," she said again, and her hands came up and fluttered with the
leaves—fluttering Sanskrit back into obscurity!
"Eight," he announced after her, as if to let her know he was quite aware of the number of pigs the neighbor's pig had had. She continued to stand there, letting the breeze try this and that with her hair. "Well," he added, severely pushing back his own hair, as if in rebuke to all hair, "isn't that all right?"
Her nose went down into a nasturtium; and while her nose smelled the flower her eyes regarded him. "Why, yes," she finally assured him, "it's quite all right." She again regarded him—laughed as if there were something to laugh at—was gone.
Mr. Caldwell did not enjoy finishing the word "indigent." The neighbor's pig had eight little pigs. Naturally, she would have eight little pigs—or thereabouts. Why need this stand between him and an old and beautiful civilization? He kept looking at the window-box. Nasturtiums were not much, after all.
And then he heard Vivian within the house, telling his sister what she had told him—a little less exuberantly, excitement having lost its flush in the first telling. Still, there was enough left; Vivian could lose a good deal of exuberance and still have enough left. "Gertrude," she was saying, "what do you think? Mr. Moon's pig has eight little pigs?"
"No! Not really?" rejoined Gertrude—why in the world did they act as though it were something so extraordinary?
Though with Gertrude nothing was extraordinary for long. "Vivian," he heard her say, "I'm thinking of having this room done over. Do you think a lavender—" Then they moved into the room, thank Heaven, and he no longer heard them.
Poor Vivian—no one was properly excited. The neighbor's pig might have eighty little pigs, and if Gertrude was thinking of turning a green bedspread lavender, eighty little pigs would be nothing to her. "All the wonders of the world would never take Gertrude out of that house. At least Vivian wasn't that way.
But thinking of the way Vivian wasn't made him think of the way Vivian was. He moved impatiently and ran his hand back through his hair with indignation. So far no word had followed "indigent." And the word that finally came did not follow "indigent." It was written at the side. It was "volatile." He waited a little while and then he wrote down "emotional." This made him feel better, as if to assure himself his interest in Vivian was a purely scientific one, and, having pigeonholed her, he could now keep her out of the way. He would get the book he wanted from the library, then settle down. But as he passed through the hall:
"Horace," called Gertrude, as one who imparts a pleasant bit of news, "Mr. Moon's pig has eight little pigs."
"I know it," snapped Horace. He heard a laugh—Vivian's!
He went back and wrote some very severe things about the women who had once lived in India. Women never had been—what they should be!
But by evening it pleased him to be satiric. When his brother-in-law, getting home from the city, drove up to the door, Horace rose from his place on the veranda and called, excitedly: "Ben! Ben! What do you think? Mr. Moon's pig has eight little pigs!"
Ben appeared rather astonished at such a greeting from this source, but, being a business man, he was prepared to adjust himself to anything. "Eight little pigs?" he replied. "Well, it's always nice to see things moving on!" Then he spoke of the price of pork.
But the news they gave Ben that night was as nothing to the news they had for him the next night.