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      Chapter 6

       The Courting

       Table of Contents

      During Leslie’s illness I strolled down to the mill one Saturday evening. I met George tramping across the yard with a couple of buckets of swill, and eleven young pigs rushing squealing about his legs, shrieking in an agony of suspense. He poured the stuff into a trough with luscious gurgle, and instantly ten noses were dipped in, and ten little mouths began to slobber. Though there was plenty of room for ten, yet they shouldered and shoved and struggled to capture a larger space, and many little trotters dabbled and spilled the stuff, and the ten sucking, clapping snouts twitched fiercely, and twenty little eyes glared askance, like so many points of wrath. They gave uneasy, gasping grunts in their haste. The unhappy eleventh rushed from point to point trying to push in his snout, but for his pains he got rough squeezing, and sharp grabs on the ears. Then he lifted up his face and screamed screams of grief and wrath unto the evening sky.

      But the ten little gluttons only twitched their ears to make sure there was no danger in the noise, and they sucked harder, with much spilling and slobbing. George laughed like a sardonic Jove, but at last he gave ear, and kicked the ten gluttons from the trough, and allowed the residue to the eleventh. This one, poor wretch, almost wept with relief as he sucked and swallowed in sobs, casting his little eyes apprehensively upwards, though he did not lift his nose from the trough, as he heard the vindictive shrieks of ten little fiends kept at bay by George. The solitary feeder, shivering with apprehension, rubbed the wood bare with his snout, then, turning up to heaven his eyes of gratitude, he reluctantly left the trough. I expected to see the ten fall upon him and devour him, but they did not; they rushed upon the empty trough, and rubbed the wood still drier, shrieking with misery.

      “How like life,” I laughed.

      “Fine litter,” said George; “there were fourteen, only that damned she-devil, Circe, went and ate three of ’em before we got at her.”

      The great ugly sow came leering up as he spoke.

      “Why don’t you fatten her up, and devour her, the old gargoyle? She’s an offence to the universe.”

      “Nay — she’s a fine sow.”

      I snorted, and he laughed, and the old sow grunted with contempt, and her little eyes twisted towards us with a demoniac leer as she rolled past.

      “What are you going to do tonight!” I asked. “Going out?”

      “I’m going courting,” he replied, grinning.

      “Oh! — wish I were!”

      “You can come if you like — and tell me where I make mistakes, since you’re an expert on such matters.”

      “Don’t you get on very well then?” I asked.

      “Oh, all right — it’s easy enough when you don’t care a damn. Besides, you can always have a Johnny Walker. That’s the best of courting at the Ram Inn. I’ll go and get ready.”

      In the kitchen Emily sat grinding out some stitching from a big old hand machine that stood on the table before her: she was making shirts for Sam, I presumed. That little fellow, who was installed at the farm, was seated by her side firing off words from a reading book. The machine rumbled and rattled on, like a whole factory at work, for an inch or two, during which time Sam shouted in shrill explosions like irregular pistol shots: “Do — not — pot —”

      “Put!” cried Emily from the machine; “put —” shrilled the child, “the soot — on — my — boot — ” there the machine broke down, and, frightened by the sound of his own voice, the boy stopped in bewilderment and looked round.

      “Go on!” said Emily, as she poked in the teeth of the old machine with the scissors, then pulled and prodded again. He began, “— boot — but — you ——” here he died off again, made nervous by the sound of his voice in the stillness. Emily sucked a piece of cotton and pushed it through the needle.

      “Now go on,” she said, “—‘but you may’.”

      “But — you — may — shoot”:— he shouted away, reassured by the rumble of the machine: “Shoot — the — fox. I— I— It — is — at — the — rot —”

      “Root,” shrieked Emily, as she guided the stuff through the doddering jaws of the machine.

      “Root,” echoed the boy, and he went off with these crackers: “Root — of — the — tree.”

      “Next one!” cried Emily.

      “Put — the — ol —” began the boy.

      “What?” cried Emily.

      “Ole — on —”

      “Wait a bit!” cried Emily, and then the machine broke down.

      “Hang!” she ejaculated.

      “Hang!” shouted the child.

      She laughed, and leaned over to him:

      “Put the oil in the pan to boil, while I toil in the soil’— Oh, Cyril, I never knew you were there! Go along now, Sam: David ‘11 be at the back somewhere.”

      “He’s in the bottom garden,” said I, and the child ran out.

      Directly George came in from the scullery, drying himself. He stood on the hearth-rug as he rubbed himself, and surveyed his reflection in the mirror above the high mantlepiece; he looked at himself and smiled. I wondered that he found such satisfaction in his image, seeing that there was a gap in his chin, and an uncertain moth-eaten appearance in one cheek. Mrs Saxton still held this mirror an object of dignity; it was fairly large, and had a well-carven frame; but it left gaps and spots and scratches in one’s countenance, and even where it was brightest, it gave one’s reflection a far-away dim aspect. Notwithstanding, George smiled at himself as he combed his hair, and twisted his moustache.

      “You seem to make a good impression on yourself,” said I.

      “I was thinking I looked all right — sort of face to go courting with,” he replied, laughing: “You just arrange a patch of black to come and hide your faults — and you’re all right.”

      “I always used to think,” said Emily, “that the black spots had swallowed