ll want a hand with cart-horses and
plough-horses. Young folks has no call to be idle."

"I don't mean to be idle," said Geoff; "but if Mr. Eames doesn't find
fault with me, _you_'ve no call to do so either."

He spoke more valiantly than he felt, perhaps, for Matthew's stolid face
and small, twinkling eyes were not pleasant. He muttered something, and
then went grumbling across the yard towards a wall, from behind which
emanated an odour which required no explanation.

"Them's pigs," said he. Matthew had a curious trick of curtailing his
phrases as his temper waxed sourer. Articles, prepositions, and auxiliary
verbs disappeared, till at last his language became a sort of spoken
hieroglyphics.

Geoff looked over the pig-sty wall. Grunt, grumph, snort--out they all
tumbled, one on the top of the other, making for the trough. Poor
things! it was still empty. Geoff could hardly help laughing, and yet he
felt rather sorry for them.

"I'll go and fetch their dinner," he said. "I don't mind pigs; but they
are awfully dirty."

"Ax the missus for soap to wash 'em," said Matthew, with a grin. He
hadn't yet made up his mind if the new boy was sharp or not.

"No," said Geoff, "I'll not do that till the first of April; but I'll
tell you what, Matthew, I'll not keep them as dirty as they are. And _I_
should say that the chap that's been looking after them is a very idle
fellow." Matthew scowled. "Pigs don't _need_ to be so dirty," Geoff
went on. "I know at Cole----" But he stopped abruptly. He was certainly
not going to take Matthew into his confidence. He asked to be shown the
pony--poor old pony! it didn't look as if it would be over
"sperrity"--and then he went back to the house to fetch the pigs'
dinner.

Very hot, instead of cold, he was by the time he had carried across pail
after pail of Mrs. Eames's "swill," and emptied it into the barrel which
stood by the sty. It wasn't savoury work, either, and the farmer's wife
made a kind of excuse for there being so much of it. "Matthew were that
idle," and they'd been a hand short the last week or two. But Geoff
wasn't going to give in; there was a sort of enjoyment in it when it
came to the actual feeding of the pigs, and for their digestion's sake,
it was well that the farmer's wife warned him that there _might_ be such
a thing as over-feeding, even of pigs. He would have spent the best part
of the afternoon in filling the trough and watching them squabble over
it.

He w