nd black
foxes as a side-line; and in addition to these my heart was set on a
pair of pigs.

"Why won't one pig do?" she would ask. And I tried to explain; but
there are things that cannot be explained to the feminine mind, things
perfectly clear to a man that you cannot make a woman see.

Pigs, I told her, naturally go by pairs, like twins and scissors and
tongs. They do better together, as scissors do. Nobody ever bought a
_scissor_. Certainly not. Pigs need the comfort of one another's
society, and the diversion of one another to take up their minds in the
pen; hens I explained were not the only broody creatures, for all
animals show the tendency, and does not the Preacher say, "Two are
better than one: if two lie together then have they heat: but how can
one be warm alone"?

I was sure, I told her, that the Preacher had pigs in mind, for judging
by the number of pig-prohibitions throughout Hebrew literature, they
must have had pigs _constantly_ in mind. This observation of the early
Hebrew poet and preacher is confirmed, I added, by all the modern
agricultural journals, as well as by all our knowing neighbors. Even
the Flannigans (an Irish family down the road),--even the Flannigans, I
pointed out, always have two pigs, for all their eight children and his
job tending gate at the railroad crossing. They have a goat, too. If
a man with that sort of job can have eight children and a goat and two
pigs, why can't a college professor have a few of the essential,
elementary things, I 'd like to know?

"Do you call your four boys a few?" she asked.

"I don't call my four Flannigan's eight," I replied, "nor my one pig
his two. Flannigan has the finest pigs on the road. He has a
wonderful way with a pair of pigs--something he inherited, I suppose,
for I imagine there have been pigs in the Flannigan family ever since--"

"They were kings in Ireland," she put in sweetly.

"Flannigan says," I continued, "that I ought to have two pigs: 'For
shure, a pair o' pags is double wan pag,' says Flannigan--good clear
logic it strikes me, and quite convincing."

She picked up the colander of shelled peas with a sigh. "We shall want
the new potatoes and fresh salmon to go with these," her mind not on
pigs at all, but on the dinner. "Can't you dig me a few?"

"I might dig up a few fresh salmon," I replied, "but not any new
potatoes, for they have just got through the ground."

"But if I wanted you to, could n't you?