  On and on went the white gander so smoothly and swiftly that the country slipped away beneath just as the leaves of a book do when they slip from under your finger too fast for you to see the print or pictures. "I wonder what that is," said Ellen as a spot of red shone out among the green beneath. The gander stayed his wings so that Ellen could look. It was a little red brick house. Around it were other houses that looked as though they were built of sods. They had chimneys and from two or three of these chimneys thin lines of smoke rose through the still air. As the gander hovered above them "Oh, what's that?" cried Ellen. "It must be a pig and I'm afraid some one is hurting it. Oh dear!" "Do you want to go and see mistress?" asked the gander. Ellen said she did, so the gander turned in that direction. When they reached the knoll they found that it was indeed a pig that was making the noise, but Ellen could not see why it was shrieking so. It sat there all alone under an oak tree and with its pink nose lifted to the sky and its eyes shut it wept aloud. The tears trickled down its bristly cheeks. Suddenly it stopped squeaking, and getting up began quietly hunting about for acorns, and craunching them as though it found them very good. "What's the matter, you poor little pig?" asked Ellen, looking down at it from the gander's back. She had not spoken with any idea of receiving any answer. The little pig looked up when he heard her voice. As soon as he saw her he sat down and began squeaking so shrilly that Ellen felt like covering her ears. "Week! Week! Week!" he cried. "Can't find my way home." For a moment Ellen was so surprised at hearing the pig speak that she could not say anything. Then she asked, "Where do you live?" But the pig did not hear her. "Where do you live?" she repeated in a louder tone; then she shouted, "Hush!" so loudly that the little pig stopped short with his mouth half open and the tears still standing in his eyes. "Where do you live?" she asked for the third time. "I live over by the wood in the little sod house next to the brick one," answered the little pig. "Well, isn't that it there?" and The little pig looked. "Why, so it is," he cried. Then curling up his little tail he trotted away in that direction. The white gander flew beside him and Ellen talked as they went. "Why didn't you see it before?" "I was coming home from market with my brother; he's quite a big pig; and I stopped to eat some acorns, so he said he wouldn't wait for me any longer, and he went on and that lost me." "But if you'd just looked you would have seen it." "I couldn't look because I was hunting for acorns, and then I began to cry, and then I hunted for some more acorns." It sounded so foolish, Ellen couldn't help laughing. "I think I'd better go home with you or you may get lost again," she said. Presently she asked, "How many brothers have you?" "Four," answered the pig. "One of them's going to have roast beef for dinner." Suddenly he sat down and began to cry again. "What in the world's the matter now?" asked Ellen in desperation. "Oweek! Oweek! Maybe he's eaten it all." "Well you'd better hurry home and see. If you keep on sitting here and crying, I know you won't get any." This thought made the little pig jump up and start toward home as fast as his short legs would carry him. When they reached the sod house next to the brick one another pig was standing in the doorway looking out. He was larger than Ellen's companion. He stared hard at the little girl and her gander, but when he spoke it was to the little pig. "You naughty little pig, why didn't you come home?" The little pig did not answer this question. "Has Middling finished his roast beef?" he asked. "There's some fat left." As the little pig hurried in through the door, Ellen asked of the other, "Is this your house?" "Yes," grunted the pig. Three other pigs had appeared in the doorway by this time. They all stared at the little girl. "It's a dear little house," said Ellen. "Would you like to look inside?" asked the largest pig. Ellen said she would. She slipped from the gander and the pigs made way for her to go in; but she only looked through the doorway, without entering. The littlest pig was seated at a table eating beef fat as fast as he could. Ellen did not think he ate very nicely. "It's a dear little house," she repeated. Then she looked about her. At the window of one of the other houses she caught a glimpse of a head. It looked like a cat's head. "Who live in all these other houses?" she asked. "Well, in that brick house lives another pig," answered the pig they called Middling. "Sometimes he comes to see us, but he doesn't have very much to do with us, because he's in a story; a real story you know, and we're only in a rhyme." "What story is he in?" asked Ellen. "The story of the wolf that huffed and puffed and blew the house in. He had two brothers, and one built a house of leaves and one built a house of straw, and the wolf came and blew their houses in and ate them up, but this one built his house of bricks, so when the wolf came to it—" "Oh, yes, I know that story," interrupted Ellen, for she had heard it so often she was rather tired of it. "Who lives in the house beyond that?" "The seven little kids. A wolf really did swallow them once, but their mother cut him open with her scissors while he was asleep and they all got out." "And who lives in the little furry "An old cat. She's nothing but a rhyme. She's very particular, though. Why, one time she was just as mad at her kittens, just because they lost some mittens she had knitted for them." So Middling went on talking of all the people who lived in the village, while Ellen listened and wondered. It seemed so strange she could hardly believe it was all true. "What fun you must have together!" she said at last. The pigs looked at each other and grunted. "We would have," said a slim pig that the others called Ringling, "if it wasn't for an old goat that lives in a cave down at the end of the street." "Oh, but he's a naughty one," broke in Thumbie, the fattest pig. "He's always doing mischief and playing tricks on us." "That was a bad trick he played on you, Thumbie," said Middling. "What was that?" asked the little girl. "Well, we were all away except Thumbie, and he was asleep in the doorway, and the old goat saw him and brought a paint pot and painted his back so it looked like a big fat face lying there. So when we came home we didn't know what it was, and we were scared, but Thumbie woke up and began to get up, and Ringling she squeaked, 'Run! run! Big face is after us,' so we all began to run. Thumbie he saw us all running, so he got scared too, and he ran after us, and the faster we ran the faster he ran. After a while he tripped and fell, and then he began to cry and we knew who it was." "Oh, yes, he's as mean as mean can be," went on Middling. "Why, one time when our raspberries were ripe old Shave-head came here—" "Who's Shave-head?" interrupted Ellen. "Oh, he's the goat. Old Shave-head came here and asked if he couldn't have "Then he went out in the garden and began to pick raspberries as fast as ever he could. "We all sat round and wondered what was in the pannikin. "Littlesie guessed it was acorns, and Thumbie thought it was apple parings, and I thought it was pancakes because it was in a pannikin." "And what was it?" asked Ellen, very much interested. "Well, it was a joke," said Middling slowly. "He'd fixed up a sort of big jumping-jack inside, and when we took off the lid it jumped out at us and said, 'Woof!' It scared us so we all squeaked and jumped back in our chairs, and the chairs upset and down we came, clatterly-slam-bang!" Ellen could not help laughing at that. "He painted all our dolls, too," said Fatty, "and almost spoiled them." "Have you dolls?" cried Ellen in surprise. "Oh, yes, indeed. I'll show them to you," and Thumbie ran into the house to get them. When he brought them out Ellen thought they were the cunningest little things for dolls that she had ever seen. They were little wooden pigs just like the real pigs themselves only very small. But they were painted in the funniest way. One was bright purple with a yellow After Ellen had looked at them she asked, "Did the goat paint them that way?" "Yes, he did, and I think it's real mean." It was Middling who answered. "What are some of the other tricks he plays?" Middling thought awhile. "I don't remember any more." "There was that Fourth-o'-July trick he played on the mother of the seven kids," suggested Ringling. "Oh, yes. That was mean too; she's so good. She bakes us cookies sometimes and then she gives the old goat some. She's always good to him and nobody likes him either." "What was the trick?" "He took torpedoes and put them all down the path at the Mother Goat's. It was a gravel path, and she thought "So do we," cried all the other pigs. "Then we'd be happy. He's just an ugly old baldhead, anyway." "I never saw a bald goat," said Ellen. "His master shaved him," said Ringling, "he was so bad." "Why? What did he do?" "Well, his master had three sons, and he sent them one at a time to take the goat out to pasture. Every time before the boy brought the goat home he would "'I am satisfied quite; No more can I bite.' Then the boy would bring him home and put him in the stable. But the father always wanted to be sure his goat had had enough, so he would go out himself and say, 'Goat have you had enough to-day?' Then it would answer: "'I only jumped about the fields, And never found a bite.' It made the father so angry to think his sons should have treated the goat that way that he drove them away from home." "I know," Ellen interrupted. "Then when the father found out that the goat had deceived him and made him send his sons away—" "He shaved the goat's head and drove it away with a yard-stick," cried Middling, raising his voice. He wanted to "I know." "And the bear was afraid to go home, for he could just see the goat's eyes shining in the cave and he didn't know what it was, and he was afraid to go in; but a bee said it would see, so it went in and stung the goat on the head and then the goat jumped out of the cave and ran till it came here, and I do wish somebody would take it away." "I would," said Ellen, "if I knew where to take it." She was not afraid of the goat, for she had a pet one at home that drew a little wagon. Littlesie, who had finished his roast beef and had come to the door, looked frightened. "You couldn't," he cried. "Why Baldhead would butt you right over if you tried to touch him." "Mistress," said the white gander, "I know how you could make the goat go away." "How?" asked Ellen. Then the gander told his plan, while Ellen and all the five pigs listened. "Good, good," cried the pigs when they had heard it, and they clapped their hoofs and leaped up into the air. Ellen, too, thought it a good plan and said she would do everything as the gander told her. The pigs showed her where the goat lived, and then they ran back home, for the gander said it would be better for Ellen and him to go to see the goat by themselves. It was in a sort of a cave under a hillock that he lived. The cave had but one window and that was only a hole through the earth, but it had a doorway and a wooden door. There Ellen knocked and a rough voice within asked, "Who is that knocking at my door?" And Ellen answered, "Some one who never was here before." Again the rough voice spoke: "Then lift the latch that I may see Who dares to come and knock for me." Then Ellen lifted the latch and after a moment's hesitation pushed open the door and stepped inside. At first it seemed so dark in the cave after the brightness outside that she could see nothing, but as her eyes grew His hair was rough and shaggy; his head was shaved and his little eyes looked at Ellen fiercely from under his curving horns. "What do you mean by coming and disturbing me here in my cave?" he asked. His voice was so very harsh that for a moment Ellen was rather frightened, but she remembered her pet goat at home and spoke up bravely: "If you please, I've come to ask you whether you won't go away and find some other place to live." "Go!" cried the goat, half rising. "Me go?" "Yes," answered Ellen. "You see, you tease and bother the animals that live here so much that they all want you to go, and I told the pigs I would come and tell you." "Then you can tell them," howled the goat in a rage, "that I'll never go. Have I sent three sons packing from their father's house and frightened a bear from his cave to be ordered out of my house at last by some pigs?" "I don't know," said Ellen, "but you'll have to go anyway." "I won't go," howled the goat. "Yes, you'll have to," said Ellen. "But I won't," howled the goat. Then Ellen did what the gander had told her to do. She put her hands to her mouth and buzzed into them like a bee. The goat started up as though he had been shot. Ever since he had been stung out of the bear's cave there was nothing in the world that he feared like a bee. He began to shiver and shake, and his bald head turned quite pale, "Oh don't sting me," he cried. "Please don't, and I'll do whatever you wish." "Then come with me," said Ellen, "and I won't hurt you." "What are you going to do with me," asked the goat quite meekly, getting up and coming to her. "I don't know just yet, but you can't stay here any longer. I'll try to find a good home for you somewheres." Then she fastened a stout twine, that the pigs had given her, about the goat's neck, and led him forth. The animals in the village had heard from the pigs how Ellen had gone to try to get the old goat to go away, and they were all standing at their doors watching. They had expected to see Ellen and the gander come running from the cave with the old goat butting them. How surprised they were to see their enemy come out trotting meekly at Ellen's heels, following wherever she chose to lead it. They all murmured together of their surprise but they were still too much afraid of the goat to shout or show the delight they felt. Ellen nodded shyly to the animals as she walked down the street. When she reached the pigs' house they were all watching for her. Middling ran out and pushed something into her hand. "It's a present for you," he whispered. Then he ran back to join the others, but he was so glad the goat was going that he could not help jumping up into the air and squeaking as he ran. The present he had given Ellen was the prettiest of the little wooden pigs; the one that was painted sky-blue with pink spots. |
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