Spotted Hemlock

easy relationship between staff and students than would have been possible at a college offering a purely academic course. Carey became the recipient of girlish confidences, the repository of girlish secrets, the adviser in the nice conducting of love affairs. He heard of college squabbles and of difficulties at home; of plans and ambitions; of despairs and frustrations; of hopes and fears; of triumphs and disasters.

‘In fact,’ he confided to his wife, soon after he had taken up his duties, ‘I might as well be their father- confessor and have done with it.’

It was also inevitable that, early in his new career, he should hear about his predecessor.

‘The other Piggy wasn’t a bit like you,’ remarked a damsel named Gay, one afternoon, after Carey had demonstrated the steps to be taken to relieve constipation in a pregnant sow.

‘In what sense?’ asked Carey. ‘Check the increased amount of bran you are using and go easy with that bland pig-oil. In fact, I should try the increased bran-content alone at first. It prevents clogging because it holds water in the lower bowel. Keep your gestation charts up to date, all of you. There will be a “snap” test tomorrow, in place of the lecture on types of bacon pig.’

‘That’s what I mean,’ explained Miss Gay. ‘The old Piggy never bothered like you do. As for snap tests—I can just see his groups standing for anything like that ! Yet, for you, we just sit up and beg.’

‘Naturally. I’m old enough to be your father. I am a father, at that. I’m accustomed to implicit obedience—or else !’

Miss Gay giggled.

‘It isn’t that,’ she said. ‘And it isn’t the Romeo in you, because there isn’t.’

‘Isn’t what? Look at that young boar we were so worried about last week. Putting him in with the little hog pig has bucked up his appetite no end. Nothing like rivalry to make a boar show what he’s made of.’

‘There you go again!’ said the amused and exasperated Miss Gay. ‘I believe you’d take a lot more interest in us if we were pigs.’

‘Well, of course I should. Pigs are infinitely more interesting than callow young women.’

‘It’s a good thing all men don’t think alike, then. When are you taking us to that bacon-curing place ? I hate to think of our pigs ending up as streaky and long back rashers.’

‘I know. It is sad, but life’s like that. I’m not sure that I myself wouldn’t rather end up that way, though, appreciated to the last, and of some use, even in death.’

Miss Gay giggled.

‘Even your jokes aren’t a bit like his,’ she said. ‘But when I heard he’d broken his leg I was simply terribly upset. He was quite a heart-throb, you know. He came here from Highpepper.’

‘Did he ? I suppose he considered his talents were wasted among the Philistines.—Miss Morris, lift that piglet by one hind leg and the shoulders. No, you won’t hurt him that way. Gentle but firm—that’s it.’

‘He couldn’t manage the men, so I heard,’ said Miss Gay, mucking out rapidly. ‘Why is it that, when we let these animals out for exercise, they make straight for the nearest mud and then come back and rock and roll on my nice clean straw?’

‘High body temperature, poor creatures.—Cod-liver oil for that sow, Miss Walters, and don’t forget her mineral salts. How long have you had her in the paddock?’

‘Best part of the day, Mr Lestrange.’ Miss Walters was the rhubarb-fancier, but Carey did not know that.

‘That’s the idea. Keep her toned up with exercise. She’ll have a rotten time if she gets too fat, poor old girl.’

‘Piggy,’ pursued the indefatigable Miss Gay, ‘would have added a personal touch to that advice, if you see what I mean, Mr Lestrange.’

‘Piggy by name but Wolf by nature, I presume?’

Miss Gay giggled.

‘He isn’t exactly U, like you,’ she explained.

‘He seems to have been good with pigs,’ said Carey, leaning over and slapping a lop-eared Cumberland, ‘and that’s the whole point, is it not?—What about that youngster of yours with oedema, Miss Platt?’

‘Like you said, Mr Lestrange—sloppy bran mash with an ounce and a half of Epsom salts, and small ordinary bran mashes three times a day.’

‘That’s the spirit.’ He took an apple out of his breeches pocket and gave it to a young pig which was scratching itself against his gaiters. ‘Well, knock off any time now, girls. I want to get home to my telly.’

‘It’s too bad you go home every evening,’ said Miss Gay, ‘and weekends, too. Think of the fun you could have.’

‘I do—and shudder,’ said Carey.

One morning, at his home in Oxfordshire, his wife Jenny had gone down to the piggeries with Ditch, Carey’s pigman, to look at a new boar, when Mrs Ditch, who acted, in their small, square, stone-built house, as housekeeper, cook and general factotum, came to the Scandinavian-type pig-house with the tidings that the master was on the telephone.

Answering it, Jenny learned that her lord was staying the night in College.

‘Sorry,’ he said, when she took the call, ‘but I shan’t be home tonight. We’ve run into a spot of trouble.’

‘What sort of trouble?’

‘Only a gang of louts, but everything’s in a mess. Fences broken, pigs let out, fowl-runs opened—all the works. Anyway, we’re slaving like mad to get things shipshape, and I’m going to do a spot of sentry-duty tonight. Haven’t told Miss McKay. She’d have a fit if she thought I wasn’t getting my beauty sleep. But my pigman and I are rather