Page:The Story of Opal.djvu/192



I climbed into the pig-pen. I crawled on my hands and knees back under the shed where he and his sisters five and his little brother were all having breakfast from their mother. I gently did pull away by his hind-legs, from among all those dear baby pigs, he who had the most curl in his tail. I took him to the pump and pumped water on him to get every speck of dirt off. He squealed because the water was cold. So I took some of the warm water the mamma was going to wash the milk-pans in and I did give him a warm bath in the wash-pan. Then he was the pinkiest white pig you ever saw. I took the baby's talcum-powder can and I shook it lots of times all over him. When the powder sprinkled in his eyes, he did object with a regular baby-pig squeal. And I climbed right out the bedroom window with him, because the mamma heard his squeal and she was coming fast. I did go to the barn in a hurry, for in the barn yesterday I did hide the christening robe. When I reached the top of the hay I stopped to put it on Solomon Grundy. Then we proceeded to the cathedral.

A little ways we did go, and I remembered how on the borning day of him I did ask that grand fir tree, Good King Edward I, to be his god-father. And that smaller fir tree growing by his side—the lovely Queen Eleanor of Castile—I did ask to be his godmother. We went aside from the path that leads unto the cathedral. We went another way. We went adown the lane to where dwell Good King