I intended asking for some explanation of the extraordinarily vindictive spirit displayed by the spear and the banner. Lalage forestalled my question and explained something else. “I have the office here,” she said, “because it’s the only place where I can be quite sure she won’t follow me.” This time I understood thoroughly what was said to me. Cattersby--that is to say, Miss Battersby--if she were the sort of person who mourned over torn frocks, and if, as Lalage suggested, she liked clothes, would be very unwilling to follow any one into the recesses of the pigsty. Even a bower in the upper branches of a tree would be less secure from her intrusion. We crawled in. Against the far wall of the chamber stood the trough from which the pigs, now no doubt deceased, used to eat. “It was put there,” said Lalage, who seemed to know that I was thinking of the trough, “after they had done cleaning out the sty, so that it wouldn’t go rotten in the wet before we got some more young pigs.” “Was that Miss Battersby’s idea?” “No, it wasn’t. Cattersby wouldn’t think of anything half so useful. All she cares about is sums and history and lessony things. It was Tom Kitterick who put it there, and I helped him. Tom Kitterick is the boy who cleans the boots and pumps the water. It was that time,” she added, “that I got paint all over my blue dress. She said it was Tom Kitterick’s fault.” “It may have been,” I said, “partly. Anyhow Tom Kitterick is a red-haired, freckly youth. It wouldn’t do him any harm to be slanged a bit for something.” “It’s a jolly sight better to have freckles, even if you come out all over like a turkey egg, than to go rubbing stinking stuff on your face at night. That’s what Cattersby does. I caught her at it.” Miss Battersby has a nice, smooth complexion and is, no doubt, quite justified in doing her best to preserve it. But I did not argue the point with Lalage. A discussion might have led to further revelations of intimate details of the lady’s toilet. I was young in those days and I rather prided myself on being a gentleman. I changed the subject. “Perhaps,” I said, “you will now tell me why you have brought me here. Are we to have a picnic tea in the pigs’ trough?” Lalage crawled past me. She had to crawl, for there was not room in the sty for even a child to stand upright. She took out of the trough a bundle of papers, pierced at the top left-hand corner and tied with a slightly soiled blue ribbon. She handed it to me and I looked it over. It was, apparently, a manuscript magazine modelled on those sold at railway bookstalls for sixpence. It was called, as I might have guessed, the _Anti-Cat_. The table of contents promised the following reading matter: 1. Editor’s Chat. 2. Poetry--A Farewell. To be recited in her presence. 3. The Ignominy of Having a Governess. 4. Prize Competition for the Best Insult Story.