I wanted to take mine up to the house and give him some warm milk and nurse him, but I saw that Horace was not much pleased with him, and I was afraid of renewing our quarrel by proposing it then.
More than a week passed, with my going down twice every day with Horace, to feed the funny, noisy little rascals, and staying there more than an hour sometimes, to watch them eat, and frolic about the pen. After the first day, I made so bold as to ask Horace to let me take some warm milk in a little old pan, for mine. He consented, and would even get over into the pen and hand him out to me, while I put him down on the ground, in the sunshine, and scratched his back and head while he ate, until he grew to know me, and Horace grew to like him and to be as anxious about him and as tender toward him as I was.
As I said, more than a week passed in this way, when, one morning, Horace said he should let them take a little run outside. So he propped up the sliding door with a stick, and drove the old sow out, while the little pigs came tumbling after. I stayed a long time, watching them root and frisk about--mine always lagging behind the others and never playing any--till it came dinner-time, and I went up to the house. After dinner I went with Tom (one of our hired hands), over to the mill, and did not get back till tea time. Just as I was getting into my place at table, I heard a squeal from the kitchen, and with the thought of my pig in my mind, rushed down to see what was the matter.
Horace had just come in and was standing by the fire, with Wangie and Tom, looking at my poor little pig, who lay on an old bag in his arms, dead--as I thought, till Horace, in laying him down on a chair, jarred him a little, and made him squeal again.
He had fallen down into an old dry cistern there was in the sheep-yard, and broken "he right _hand_ foreleg," as Horace said.
"Betta kill um," said Tom--"he not werry fat, but'll do to roast for de kitchen."--Tom and I had never been very good friends, and you may be sure that this speech did not help to make us so.
"Go 'way, boy!" said Horace, whose heart was always as gentle as a girl's; "he Mass' L----'s pig, and he gwine for to be doctored."
Horace's idea struck me, and without thinking, without my hat--the tears streaming down my face, and nearly dark as it was, I took piggy in my arms and started off toward the village, to find my uncle, who was a physician.