If I take Lily for my heroine
after all, I shall be following a noble precedent--Michael Fairless, in
_The Roadmender_, did something very much like it. 'In early spring,'
she says, 'I took a long tramp. Towards afternoon, tired and thirsty,
I sought water at a little lonely cottage. Bees worked and sang over
the thyme and marjoram in the garden; and in a homely sty lived a
solemn black pig, a pig with a history. It was no common utilitarian
pig, but the honoured guest of the old couple who lived there; and the
pig knew it. A year before, their youngest and only surviving child,
then a man of five-and-twenty, had brought his mother the result of his
savings in the shape of a fine young pig. A week later he lay dead of
the typhoid. Hence the pig was sacred, cared for, and loved by this
Darby and Joan.

'"'E be mos' like a child to me and the mother, an' mos' as sensible as
a Christian, 'e be," the old man said.'

What a world of illusion this is, to be sure! It takes a good pair of
eyes to see through its good-humoured trickery. You see a pig turning
this way and that way as he wanders aimlessly about the yard, and you
never dream of romance. And yet that pig is none other than Lily! You
see another pig in a commonplace sty, and you never dream of pathos;
but old Joan wipes a tear from her eye with her apron when she
remembers how that pig came into her possession. There is a world of
poetry in pig-sties. Yes, and pathos, too, of its kind. For, as I
said, Lily is dead. It was this way.

John and Mary are not rich; and a pig is a pig.

'What about Lily, Mary?' John asked awkwardly one day. 'You see, Mary,
she's got to die. If we keep her, she'll die. And if we sell her,
she'll only die. If we keep her, Mary, she may die of some disease,
and we shall see her in pain. If we sell her, she will die suddenly,
and feel no pain. And then, Mary,' he continued slowly, as though
afraid to introduce so prosaic an aspect of so pathetic a theme, 'and
then, Mary, if she dies here, look at the loss, for Lily's a pig, you
know! And if we sell her, look at the gain! And with part of the
money we can get another pet, and be just as fond of it.'

There were protests and there were tears, but Lily went to market.

Awhile afterwards John came home from the city with a parcel. 'Mary,'
he said hesitatingly, 'I've brought ye home a bit o' Lily! I thought
I'd like to see how she'd eat.'

Next morning at breakfas