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"Une bete," corrected Matilda; "a pig is masculine as long as you call it a pig, but if you lose your temper with it and call it a ferocious beast it becomes one of us at once. French is a dreadfully unsexing language." "For goodness' sake let us talk English then," said Mrs. Stossen. "Is there any way out of this garden except through the paddock where the pig is?"
"'Belinda, the little Breadwinner, is considered my best piece, or, perhaps, it ought to be something in French. Henri Quatre's address to his soldiers is the only thing I really know in that language." "If you will go and fetch some one to drive that animal away I will give you something to buy yourself a nice present," said Mrs. Stossen. Matilda came several inches lower down the medlar tree.
Mother and daughter muttered certain remarks under their breath, in which the word "beast" was prominent, and probably had no reference to Tarquin. "I find I have got another half-crown," said Mrs. Stossen in a shaking voice; "here you are. Now please fetch some one quickly."
Philidore Stossen to her daughter, "through a small grass paddock and then through a walled fruit garden full of gooseberry bushes. I went all over the place last year when the family were away. There is a door that opens from the fruit garden into a shrubbery, and once we emerge from there we can mingle with the guests as if we had come in by the ordinary way.
Stossen and her daughter, suitably arrayed for a county garden party function with an infusion of Almanack de Gotha, sailed through the narrow grass paddock and the ensuing gooseberry garden with the air of state barges making an unofficial progress along a rural trout stream.
Stossen reluctantly; in moments of flurry such French as she knew was not under very good control. "La, a l'autre cote de la porte, est un cochon " "Un cochon? Ah, le petit charmant!" exclaimed Matilda with enthusiasm. "Mais non, pas du tout petit, et pas du tout charmant; un bete feroce "
"I always go over the wall, by way of the plum tree," said Matilda. "Dressed as we are we could hardly do that," said Mrs. Stossen; it was difficult to imagine her doing it in any costume. "Do you think you could go and get some one who would drive the pig away?" asked Miss Stossen. "I promised my aunt I would stay here till five o'clock; it's not four yet."
Matilda Cuvering, with the alert eyes of thirteen years old and the added advantage of an exalted position in the branches of a medlar tree, had enjoyed a good view of the Stossen flanking movement and had foreseen exactly where it would break down in execution. "They'll find the door locked, and they'll jolly well have to go back the way they came," she remarked to herself.
By dint of throwing the fruit in front of him at judicious intervals Matilda decoyed him back to his stye, while the delivered captives hurried across the paddock. "Well, I never! The little minx!" exclaimed Mrs. Stossen when she was safely on the high road. "The animal wasn't savage at all, and as for the ten shillings, I don't believe the Fresh Air Fund will see a penny of it!"
With much probing and plucking and many regretful murmurs the beleaguered ladies managed to produce seven-and-sixpence between them. "I am afraid this is all we've got," said Mrs. Stossen. Matilda showed no sign of coming down either to the earth or to their figure. "I could not do violence to my conscience for anything less than ten shillings," she announced stiffly.
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