"I think I shall go and bathe," said Anne. "It's so hot." The
opportunity had passed.


CHAPTER V.

Mr. Wimbush had taken them to see the sights of the Home Farm,
and now they were standing, all six of them--Henry Wimbush, Mr.
Scogan, Denis, Gombauld, Anne, and Mary--by the low wall of the
piggery, looking into one of the styes.

"This is a good sow," said Henry Wimbush. "She had a litter of
fourteen.

"Fourteen?" Mary echoed incredulously. She turned astonished
blue eyes towards Mr. Wimbush, then let them fall onto the
seething mass of elan vital that fermented in the sty.

An immense sow reposed on her side in the middle of the pen. Her
round, black belly, fringed with a double line of dugs, presented
itself to the assault of an army of small, brownish-black swine.
With a frantic greed they tugged at their mother's flank. The
old sow stirred sometimes uneasily or uttered a little grunt of
pain. One small pig, the runt, the weakling of the litter, had
been unable to secure a place at the banquet. Squealing shrilly,
he ran backwards and forwards, trying to push in among his
stronger brothers or even to climb over their tight little black
backs towards the maternal reservoir.