Minerva's Manoeuvres: The Cheerful Facts of a "Return to Nature" — John Shaqi
Minerva's Manoeuvres: The Cheerful Facts of a "Return to Nature"Loomis, Charles Battell
General
Minerva's Manoeuvres: The Cheerful Facts of a "Return to Nature"
Loomis, Charles Battell
Country life -- Fiction; Household employees -- Fiction; Humorous stories; Married people -- Fiction; New England -- Fiction
When we reached the sitting room we could hear the scuttering
together with other noises that were not pleasant, and I
realized that to metropolitan Minerva the animal must be very
terrifying if, indeed, he proved to be what I thought he was.
Minerva had evidently slammed the kitchen door after her, for it
was shut.
I opened it and the stark naked scutterer turned out to be a
little pig not much bigger than Miss Pussy and as pink and nude
as Venus rising from the sea.
The little chap was frantic and he rushed through the dining
room into the sitting room and thence to the front porch.
Minerva had been standing there wringing her hands, with her
back to the house. It therefore happened that she did not see
the innocent little porker coming. His only idea was to get out
of doors and away, but he blundered in doing so, for he ran
plump into Minerva, who sat down on him as promptly and then in
her agitation she rolled off the front steps to the front path,
and the squealing piggy, freeing himself from her skirts, ran
off down the road.
“Ow, he’s bit me. He’s bit me,” said Minerva, sitting up in the
path and rubbing her knee.
I am not entirely at home in natural history, but I do not think
it is the habit of little pigs to bite, and I told Minerva so,
but she insisted that she was bitten, and nothing would calm her
until Mrs. Ethel took her into the kitchen and satisfied her
that she had not been bitten at all.
Minerva’s plight had its funny side, and James evidently thought
so, for he now came into view and said,
“She’s the most fidgety girl I ever saw. I brought her a present
of a little pig and left it in the kitchen for her, and the pig
has never been away from its mother before, and it was most as
much frightened as Minerva was.”
“What she needs is lessons in natural history, James. The other
day she mistook a cow for a bear, and the only animals she seems
to know are horses and dogs and cats.”
“I guess I’ll go get that pig,” said James. We could hear the
little animal squealing. It was running madly around in the
lower lot.
“I’ll help you, James.”
Afterwards I was sorry I had said I would help James. I had
never chased a pig before, and I did not know they could cover
ground so quickly or so unexpectedly. Twice I was bowled over in
my efforts to grab the slippery beast, and by the time that he
was caught I was winded and perspiring.
“I’ll take it into the kitchen and show it to Minerva and tell
her how it happened,” said James.
“Yes, do,” said I. “The only way to get her broken to pigs is to
show her that they do not intend any harm.”
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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