Every pedestrian stops and smiles, and on every face comes a transforming
tenderness, a touch of almost motherly sweetness. So dear is young life to
the eye and heart of man.

A few weeks hence these same pedestrians will pass these same pigs with
no emotion, beyond, possibly, that produced by the sweet savour of frying
ham. Their _naïveté_, their charming baby quaintness, will have departed
for ever. Their features, as yet but roguishly indicated, will have become
set and hidebound; their soft little snouts will be ringed, and hard as a
fifth hoof; their dainty little ears--veritable silk purses--will have
grown long and bristly: in short, they will have lost that ineffable
tender bloom of young life which makes them quite a touching sight to-day.
Strange that loss of charm which comes with development in us all, pigs
included. A tendency to pigginess, as in these youngsters, a tendency to
manhood in the prattling and crowing babe, are both hailed as charming:
but the full-grown pig! the full-grown man! Alas! in each case the charm
seems to flee with the advent of bristles.

But let us return to the driver.

Under his arm he carries a basket, from which now and again proceed
suppressed squeaks and grunts. It is 'the rickling,' the weakling, of the
family. It will probably find an early death, and be embalmed in sage and
onions. The man has already had an offer for it--from 'Mr. Lamb.' Mr.
Lamb! Yes, Mr. Lamb at Six-Elm Farm. 'Oh! I see.' But was it not a
startling coincidence?

It has taken half an hour to come from the old bridge to the cross-roads,
barely half a mile. And now, good-bye, funny little silken-coated piglets;
good-bye, grave old mother. Ge-whoop! Good-bye, gentle driver. As you move