pay house rent,
supply the house grandly, and give away a barrow-load of vegetables
every day to the poor of the parish, by keeping a pig--if that pig were
kept properly. And after that, pork and ham and bacon came of him, while
another golden pig went on.

Mrs. Hockin was very soft-hearted, and said that she never could make
bacon of a pig like that; and I answered that if she ever got him it
would be unwise to do so. However, the law was laid down in both books
that golden fowls and diamondic pigs must die the death before they
begin to overeat production; and the Major said, "To be sure. Yes, yes.
Let them come to good meat, and then off with their heads." And his wife
said that she was sure she could do it. When it comes to a question of
tare and tret, false sentiment must be excluded.

At the moment, these things went by me as trifles, yet made me more
impatient. Being older now, and beholding what happens with tolerance
and complacence, I am only surprised that my good friends were so
tolerant of me and so complacent. For I must have been a great annoyance
to them, with my hurry and my one idea. Happily they made allowance for
me, which I was not old enough to make for them.

"Go to London, indeed! Go to London by yourself!" cried the Major, with
a red face, and his glasses up, when I told him one morning that I could
stop no longer without doing something. "Mary, my dear, when you have
done out there, will you come in and reason--if you can--with Miss Wood.
She vows that she is going to London, all alone."

"Oh, Major Hockin--oh, Nicholas dear, such a thing has happened!" Mrs.
Hockin had scarcely any breath to tell us, as she came in through the
window. "You know that they have only had three bushels, or, at any
rate, not more than five, almost ever since they came. Erema, you know
as well as I do."

"Seven and three-quarter bushels of barley, at five and ninepence a
bushel, Mary," said the Major, pulling out a pocket-book; "besides
Indian corn, chopped meat, and potatoes."

"And fourteen pounds of paddy," I said--which was a paltry thing of me;
"not to mention a cake of graves, three sacks of brewers' grains, and
then--I forget what next."

"You are too bad, all of you. Erema, I never thought you would turn
against me so. And you made me get nearly all of it. But please to look
here. What do you call this? Is this no reward? Is this not enough?
Major, if you please, what do you call this? What a pity you