with so little expense or
trouble..."

A gate slammed; there was a sound of heavy footsteps.

"Morning, Rowley!" said Henry Wimbush.

"Morning, sir," old Rowley answered. He was the most venerable of
the labourers on the farm--a tall, solid man, still unbent, with grey
side-whiskers and a steep, dignified profile. Grave, weighty in his
manner, splendidly respectable, Rowley had the air of a great English
statesman of the mid-nineteenth century. He halted on the outskirts of
the group, and for a moment they all looked at the pigs in a silence
that was only broken by the sound of grunting or the squelch of a sharp
hoof in the mire. Rowley turned at last, slowly and ponderously and
nobly, as he did everything, and addressed himself to Henry Wimbush.

"Look at them, sir," he said, with a motion of his hand towards the
wallowing swine. "Rightly is they called pigs."

"Rightly indeed," Mr. Wimbush agreed.

"I am abashed by that man," said Mr. Scogan, as old Rowley plodded off
slowly and with dignity. "What wisdom, what judgment, what a sense of
values! 'Rightly are they called swine.' Yes. And I wish I could, with
as much justice, say, 'Rightly are we called men.'"

They walked on towards the cowsheds and the stables of the cart-horses.
Five white geese, taking the air this fine morning, even as they were
doing, met them in the way. They hesitated, cackled; then, converting
their lifted necks into rigid, horizontal snakes, they rushed off in
disorder, hissing horribly as they went. Red calves paddled in the dung
and mud of a spacious yard. In another enclosure stood the bull,
massive as a locomotive. He was a very calm bull, and his face wore an
expression of melancholy stupidity. He gazed with reddish-brown eyes at
his visitors, chewed thoughtfully at the tangible memories of an earlier
meal, swallowed and regurgitated, chewed again. His tail lashed savagely
from side to side; it seemed to have nothing to do with his impassive
bulk. Between his short horns was a triangle of red curls, short and
dense.

"Splendid animal," said Henry Wimbush. "Pedigree stock. But he's getting
a little old, like the boar."

"Fat him up and slaughter him," Mr. Scogan pronounced, with a delicate
old-maidish precision of utterance.

"Couldn't you give the animals a little holiday from producing
children?" asked Anne. "I'm so sorry for the poor things."

Mr. Wimbush shook his head. "Personally," he said, "I rather like seeing
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