And just round the gatepost we saw
a flash of red and white and blue and black that told us, with dumb
signification, that the pig was off in exactly the opposite direction.
Why couldn't they have gone the same way? But no, one was a pig and the
other was a donkey, as Denny said afterwards.

Daisy and H. O. started after the donkey; the rest of us, with one
accord, pursued the pig--I don't know why. It trotted quietly down the
road; it looked very black against the white road, and the ends on the
top, where the Union Jack was tied, bobbed brightly as it trotted. At
first we thought it would be easy to catch up to it. This was an error.

When we ran faster it ran faster; when we stopped it stopped and looked
round at us, and nodded. (I daresay you won't swallow this, but you may
safely. It's as true as true, and so's all that about the goat. I give
you my sacred word of honour.) I tell you the pig nodded as much as to
say--

'Oh, yes. You think you will, but you won't!' and then as soon as we
moved again off it went. That pig led us on and on, o'er miles and miles
of strange country. One thing, it did keep to the roads. When we met
people, which wasn't often, we called out to them to help us, but they
only waved their arms and roared with laughter. One chap on a bicycle
almost tumbled off his machine, and then he got off it and propped it
against a gate and sat down in the hedge to laugh properly. You remember
Alice was still dressed up as the gay equestrienne in the dressing-table
pink and white, with rosy garlands, now very droopy, and she had no
stockings on, only white sand-shoes, because she thought they would be
easier than boots for balancing on the pig in the graceful bare-backed
act.

Oswald was attired in red paint and flour and pyjamas, for a clown.
It is really IMPOSSIBLE to run speedfully in another man's pyjamas,
so Oswald had taken them off, and wore his own brown knickerbockers
belonging to his Norfolks. He had tied the pyjamas round his neck, to
carry them easily. He was afraid to leave them in a ditch, as Alice
suggested, because he did not know the roads, and for aught he recked
they might have been infested with footpads. If it had been his own
pyjamas it would have been different. (I'm going to ask for pyjamas next
winter, they are so useful in many ways.)

Noel was a highwayman in brown-paper gaiters and bath towels and a
cocked hat of newspaper. I don't know how he kept it on. And the pig was