We almost surrounded him. He edged off towards the house.

"Now we've got him!" cried the crafty Oswald, as the pig got onto a bed
of yellow pansies close against the red house wall.

All would even then have been well, but Denny, at the last, shrank from
meeting the pig face to face in a manly way. He let the pig pass him,
and the next moment, with a squeak that said "There now!" as plain as
words, the pig bolted into a French window. The pursuers halted not.
This was no time for trivial ceremony. In another moment the pig was a
captive. Alice and Oswald had their arms round him under the ruins of a
table that had had teacups on it, and around the hunters and their prey
stood the startled members of a parish society for making clothes for
the poor heathen, that that pig had led us into the very midst of. They
were reading a missionary report or something when we ran our quarry to
earth under their table. Even as he crossed the threshold I heard
something about "black brothers being already white to the harvest." All
the ladies had been sewing flannel things for the poor blacks while the
curate read aloud to them. You think they screamed when they saw the Pig
and Us? You are right.

On the whole, I cannot say that the missionary people behaved badly.
Oswald explained that it was entirely the pig's doing, and asked pardon
quite properly for any alarm the ladies had felt; and Alice said how
sorry we were, but really it was _not_ our fault this time. The curate
looked a bit nasty, but the presence of ladies made him keep his hot
blood to himself.

When we had explained, we said, "Might we go?"

The curate said, "The sooner the better." But the Lady of the House
asked for our names and addresses, and said she should write to our
father. (She did, and we heard of it too.) They did not do anything to
us, as Oswald at one time believed to be the curate's idea. They let us
go.

And we went, after we had asked for a piece of rope to lead the pig by.

"In case it should come back into your nice room," Alice said. "And that
would be such a pity, wouldn't it?"

A little girl in a starched pinafore was sent for the rope. And as soon
as the pig had agreed to let us tie it round his neck we came away. The
scene in the drawing-room had not been long.

The pig went slowly,

"Like the meandering brook,"

Denny said. Just by the gate the shrubs rustled and opened and the
little girl came out. Her pinafore was full of cake