Longfellow's Poems, and a brand new gilt-edged Bible, carefully covered in
brown paper, with "For Fanny from Jim" inscribed on the flyleaf. From which
Andrew Lackaday, as soon as his mind could grasp such things, deduced that
his mother's name was Fanny, and his father's James. But Ben Flint assured
me that Lackaday called his wife Myra, while she called him Alf, by which
names they were familiarly known by their colleagues. So who were Fanny and
Jim, if not Andrew's parents, remained a mystery.

Meanwhile there was the orphan Andrew Lackaday rich in his extreme youth
and the fortune above specified, and violently asserting his right to live
and enjoy. Meanwhile, too, Ben Flint and his wife had lost their pig
Bob, Billy's predecessor. Bob had grown old and past his job and become
afflicted with an obscure porcine disease, possibly senile decay, for
which there was no remedy but merciful euthanasia. The Flints mourned him,
desolate. They had not the heart to buy another. They were childless,
pigless. But behold! There, to their hand was Andrew, fatherless,
motherless. On an occasion, just after the funeral, for which Ben Flint
paid, when Madame was mothering the tiny Andrew in her arms, and Ben stood
staring, lost in yearning for the lost and beloved pig, she glanced up and
said:

"_Tiens_, why should he not replace Bob, _ce petit cochon?_"

Ben Flint slapped his thigh.

"By Gum!" said he, and the thing was done. The responsibility of self
dependence for life and enjoyment was removed from the shoulders of young
Andrew Lackaday for many years to come.

In the course of time, when the child's _etat civil_, as a resident