of nations; and there
should be a bee-plank incorporated into every party platform, promising
that president, cabinet, and every member of congress along with the
philosophers shall keep bees.

[Illustration: A pair of pigs]

X

A PAIR OF PIGS

I dropped down beside Her on the back steps and took a handful of her
peas to pod. She set the colander between us, emptied half of her task
into my hat, and said:--

"It is ten o'clock. I thought you had to be at your desk at eight this
morning? And you are hot and tired. What is it you have been doing?"

"Getting ready for the _pigs_," I replied, laying marked and steady
emphasis on the plural.

"You are putting the pods among the peas and the peas with the
pods"--and so I was. "Then we are going to have another pig," she went
on.

"No, not _a_ pig this time; I think I 'll get a pair. You see while
you are feeding one you can just as well be feeding--"

"A lot of them," she said with calm conviction.

"You 're right!" I exclaimed, a little eagerly. "Besides two pigs do
better than--"

"Well, then," very gravely and never pausing for an instant in her
shelling, "let's fence in the fourteen acres and have a nice little
piggery of Mullein Hill."

The pods popped and split in her nimble fingers as if she knew a secret
spring in their backs. I can beat her picking peas, but in shelling
peas she seems to have more fingers than I have; they quite confuse me
at times as they twinkle at their task.

So they did now. I had spent several weeks working up my brief for two
pigs; but was utterly unprepared for a whole piggery. The suddenness
of it, the sweep and compass of it, left me powerless to pod the peas
for a moment.

I ought to have been at my writing, but it was too late to mention that
now; besides here was my hat still full of peas. I could not
ungallantly dump them back into her empty pan and quit. There was
nothing for it but to pod on and stop with one pig. But my heart was
set on a pair of pigs. College had just closed (we were having our
17th of June peas) and the joy of the farm was upon me. I had a cow
and a heifer, eighty-six hens, three kinds of bantams, ten hives of
bees, and two ducks. I was planning to build a pigeon coop, and had
long talked of turning the nine-acre ridge of sprout land joining my
farm into a milch goat pasture, selling the milk at one dollar a quart
to Boston babies; I had thought somewhat of Belgian hares a