both from their tenderest age, pleaded that they should be
allowed to 'put on another score.' The point was warmly
argued all round.

'The black sow,' said I (they were both sows, you must know)
- 'The black sow had a litter of ten last time, and the white
one only six. Ergo, if history repeats itself, as I have
heard you say, you should keep the black, and sacrifice the
white.'

'But,' objected the rector, 'that was the white's first
litter, and the black's second. Why shouldn't the white do
as well as the black next time?'

'And better, your reverence,' chimed in the gardener. 'The
number don't allays depend on the sow, do it?'

'That is neither here nor there,' returned the rector.

'Well,' said the gardener, who stood to his guns, 'if your
reverence is right, as no doubt you will be, that'll make
just twenty little pigs for the butcher, come Michaelmas.'

'We can't kill 'em before they are born,' said the rector.

'That's true, your reverence. But it comes to the same
thing.'

'Not to the pigs,' retorted the rector.