The Tale of Little Pig Robinson (3 page)

Important rooks and lively jackdaws strutted about the meadows amongst the daisies and buttercups. Lambs
skipped and baa’ed; the sheep looked round at Robinson.

“Mind yourself in Stymouth, little pig,” said a motherly ewe.

Robinson trotted on until he was out of breath and very hot. He had crossed five big
fields, and ever so many stiles; stiles with steps; ladder stiles; stiles of wooden posts; some of them were
very awkward with a heavy basket. The farm of Piggery Porcombe was no longer in sight when he looked back.
In the distance before him, beyond the farmlands and cliffs — never any nearer — the dark blue sea rose like
a wall.

Robinson sat down to rest beside a hedge in a
sheltered sunny spot. Yellow pussy willow catkins were in flower above his head; there were primroses in
hundreds on the bank, and a warm smell of moss and grass and steaming moist red earth.

“If I eat my dinner now, I will not have to carry it. Wee, wee, wee!” said
Robinson.

The walk had made him so hungry he would have liked to eat an egg as well as the jam
sandwiches; but he had been too well brought up.

“It would spoil the two dozen,” said Robinson.

He picked a bunch of primroses and tied them up with a bit of darning wool that Aunt
Dorcas had given him for a pattern.

“I will sell them in the market for my very own self, and buy sweeties with my pennies. How
many pennies have I got?” said Robinson, feeling in his pocket. “One from Aunt Dorcas, and one from Aunt
Porcas, and one for my primroses for my very own self — oh, wee, wee, wee! There is somebody trotting along
the road! I shall be late for market!”

Robinson jumped up and pushed his basket through a very narrow stile, where the
footpath crossed into the public road. He saw a man on horseback. Old Mr. Pepperil came up, riding a
chestnut horse with white legs. His two tall greyhounds ran before him; they looked through the bars of the
gates into every field that they passed. They came bounding up to Robinson, very large and friendly; they
licked his face and asked what he had got in that basket. Mr. Pepperil called them.

“Here, Pirate! Here, Postboy! Come here, sir!” He did not wish to be answerable for
the eggs.

The road had been recently covered with sharp new flints. Mr. Pepperil walked the
chestnut horse on the grass edge, and talked to Robinson. He was a jolly old gentleman, very affable, with a red face and white whiskers. All
the green fields and red ploughland between Stymouth and Piggery Porcombe belonged to him.

“Hullo, hullo! And where are you off to, little pig Robinson?”

“Please, Mr. Pepperil, sir, I’m going to market. Wee, wee, wee!” said Robinson.

“What, all by yourself? Where are Miss Dorcas and Miss Porcas? Not ill, I
trust?”

Robinson explained about the narrow stiles.

“Dear, dear! Too fat, too fat? So you are going all alone? Why don’t your aunts keep a
dog to run errands?”

Robinson answered all Mr. Pepperil’s questions very sensibly and prettily. He showed
much intelligence, and quite a good knowledge of vegetables, for one so young. He trotted along almost under
the horse, looking up at its shiny chestnut coat, and the broad white girth, and Mr Pepperil’s gaiters and
brown leather boots. Mr. Pepperil was pleased with Robinson; he gave him another penny. At the end of the
flints, he gathered up the reins and touched the horse with his heel.

“Well, good day, little pig. Kind regards to the aunts. Mind yourself in Stymouth.” He whistled for his dogs, and trotted
away.

Robinson continued to walk along the road. He passed by an orchard where seven thin
dirty pigs were grubbing. They had no silver rings in their noses! He crossed Styford bridge without
stopping to look over the parapet at the little fishes, swimming head up stream, balanced in the sluggish
current; or the white ducks that dabbled amongst floating masses of water-crowsfoot. At Styford Mill he
called to leave a message from Aunt Dorcas to the Miller about meal; the Miller’s wife gave him an
apple.

At the house beyond the mill, there is a big dog that barks; but the big dog Gypsy
only smiled and wagged his tail at Robinson. Several carts and gigs
overtook him. First, two old farmers who screwed themselves round to
stare at Robinson. They had two geese, a sack of potatoes, and some cabbages, sitting on the back seat of
their gig. Then an old woman passed in a donkey cart with seven hens, and long pink bundles of rhubarb that
had been grown in straw under apple barrels. Then with a rattle and a jingle of cans came Robinson’s cousin,
little Tom Pigg, driving a strawberry roan pony, in a milk float.

He might have offered Robinson a lift, only he happened to be going in the opposite
direction; in fact, the strawberry roan pony was running away home.

“This little pig went to market!” shouted little Tom Pigg gaily, as he rattled out of
sight in a cloud of dust, leaving Robinson standing in the road.

Robinson walked on along the road, and presently he came to another stile in the
opposite hedge, where the footpath followed the fields again. Robinson got his basket through the stile. For
the first time he felt some apprehension. In this field there were cows; big sleek Devon cattle, dark red
like their native soil. The leader of the herd was a vicious old cow, with brass balls screwed on to the
tips of her horns. She stared disagreeably at Robinson. He sidled across the meadow and got out through the
farther stile as quickly as he could. Here the new trodden footpath followed round the edge of a crop of
young green wheat. Someone let off a gun with a bang that made Robinson jump and cracked one of Aunt
Dorcas’s eggs in the basket.

A cloud of rooks and jackdaws rose cawing and
scolding from the wheat. Other sounds mingled with their cries; noises of the town of Stymouth that began to
come in sight through the elm trees that bordered the fields; distant noises from the station; whistling of
an engine; the bump of trucks shunting; noise of workshops; the hum of a distant town; the hooter of a
steamer entering the harbour. High overhead came the hoarse cry of the gulls, and the squabbling cawing of
rooks, old and young, in their rookery up in the elm trees.

Robinson left the fields for the last time and joined a stream of country people on
foot and in carts, all going to Stymouth Market.

S
tymouth
is a pretty little town, situated at the mouth of the river Pigsty, whose sluggish waters slide gently into
a bay sheltered by high red headlands. The town itself seems to be sliding downhill in a basin of hills, all
slipping seaward into Stymouth harbour, which is dammed back by quays and the outer breakwater.

The outskirts of the town are untidy, as is frequently the case with seaports.
A straggling suburb on the western approach is inhabited principally
by goats, and persons who deal in old iron, rags, tarred rope, and fishing nets. There are rope walks, and
washing that flaps on waggling lines above banks of stony shingle, littered with seaweed, whelk shells and
dead crabs — very different from Aunt Porcas’s clothes lines over the clean green grass.

And there are marine stores that sell spy-glasses, and sou’westers, and onions; and
there are smells; and curious high sheds, shaped like sentry boxes, where they hang up herring nets to dry;
and loud talking inside dirty houses. It seemed a likely place to meet a pantechnicon. Robinson kept in the
middle of the road. Somebody in a public-house shouted at him through the window, “Come in, fat pig!” Robinson took to his heels.

The town of Stymouth itself is clean, pleasant, picturesque, and well-behaved (always
excepting the harbour); but it is extremely steep downhill. If Robinson had started one of Aunt Dorcas’s
eggs rolling at the top of High Street, it would have rolled all the way down to the bottom; only it would
have got broken certainly against a doorstep, or underfoot. There were crowds in the streets, as it was
market day.

Indeed, it was difficult to walk about without being pushed off the pavement; every
old woman that Robinson met seemed to have a basket as big as his own. In the roadway were fish barrows,
apple barrows, stalls with crockery and hardware, cocks and hens riding in pony carts, donkeys with
panniers, and farmers with wagon-loads of hay.