Anne of Ingleside - L. M. Montgomery [51]
Anne hustled him out, but Mrs Norman always considered that her prayer was spoiled and, as she had especially wanted to impress a visiting minister’s wife, it was long years before she forgave Jem or would have his father as a doctor again. After the ladies had gone home Ingleside was ransacked from top to bottom for the pig, without result. Jem, between the scolding he had got for his behaviour and his anguish over his loss, couldn’t remember just when he had seen it last or where. Mac Reese, telephoned to, responded that the last he had seen of the pig it was standing on Jem’s bureau.
‘You don’t suppose, Susan, that Mac Reese…’
‘No, Mrs Doctor dear, I feel quite sure he didn’t. The Reeses have their faults… terrible keen after money they are, but it has to be honestly come by. Where can that blessed pig be?’
‘Maybe the rats et it?’ said Di.
Jem scoffed at the idea, but it worried him. Of course rats couldn’t eat a brass pig with fifty coppers inside of him. But could they?
‘No, no, dear. Your pig will turn up,’ assured Mother.
It hadn’t turned up when Jem went to school the next day. News of his loss had reached school before him and many things were said to him, not exactly comforting. But at recess Sissy Flagg sidled up to him ingratiatingly. Sissy Flagg liked Jem and Jem did not like her, in spite of… or perhaps because of… her thick yellow curls and huge brown eyes.
Even at eight one may have problems concerning the opposite sex.
‘I can tell you who’s got your pig.’
‘Who?’
‘You’ve got to pick me for Clap-in and Clap-out and I’ll tell you.’
It was a bitter pill, but Jem swallowed it. Anything to find that pig. He sat in an agony of blushes beside the triumphant Sissy while they clapped in and clapped out, and when the bell rang he demanded his reward.
‘Alice Palmer says Willy Drew told her Bob Russell told him Fred Elliot said he knew where your pig was. Go and ask Fred.’
‘Cheat!’ cried Jem, glaring at her. ‘Cheat!’
Sissy laughed arrogantly. She didn’t care. Jem Blythe had had to sit with her for once anyhow.
Jem went to Fred Elliott, who at first declared he knew nothing about the old pig and didn’t want to. Jem was in despair. Fred Elliot was three years older than he was and a noted bully. Suddenly he had an inspiration. He pointed a grimy forefinger sternly at big, red-faced Fred Elliott.
‘You are a transubstantiationalist,’ he said distinctly.
‘Here you, don’t you call me names, young Blythe.’
‘That is more than a name,’ said Jem. ‘That is a hoodoo word. If I say it again and point my finger at you… so… you may have bad luck for a week. Maybe your toes will drop off. I’ll count ten, and if you haven’t told me before I get to ten I’ll hoodoo you.’
Fred didn’t believe it. But the skating race came off that night and he wasn’t taking chances. Besides, toes were toes. At six he surrendered.
‘All right… all right. Don’t bust your jaws saying that a second time. Mac knows where your pig is… he said he did.’
Mac was not in school, but when Ann heard Jem’s story she telephoned his mother. Mrs Reese came up a little later, flushed and apologetic.
‘Mac didn’t take the pig, Mrs Blythe. He just wanted to see if it would open, so when Jem was out of the room he twisted the tail. It fell apart in two pieces and he couldn’t get it together again. So he put the two halves of the pig and the money in one of Jem’s Sunday boots in the closet. He hadn’t ought to have touched it… and his father has whaled the stuffing out of him… but he didn’t steal it, Mrs Blythe.’
‘What was that word you said to Fred Elliot, Little Jem, dear?’ asked Susan, when the dismembered pig had been found and the money counted.
‘Transubstantiationalist,’ said Jem proudly. ‘Walter found it in the dictionary last week… you know he likes great big full words, Susan… and we both learned how to pronounce it. We said it over to each other twenty-one times in bed before we went to sleep so that we’d remember it.’
Now that the necklace was bought and stowed away in the third box from the top in the middle drawer of Susan’s bureau,