MASTER SWIFT AT HOME.—RUFUS.—THE EX-PIG-MINDER.—JAN AND THE SCHOOLMASTER.  
It was a lovely autumn evening the same year, when the school having broken up for the day, Master Swift returned to his home for tea.  He lived in a tiny cottage on the opposite side of the water-meadows to that on which Dame Datchett dwelt, and farther down towards the water-mill.  He had neither wife nor child, but a red dog with a plaintive face, and the name of Rufus, kept his house when he was absent, and kept him company when he was at home.
 
Rufus was a mongrel.  He was not a red setter, though his coloring was similar.  A politely disposed person would have called him a retriever, and his curly back and general appearance might have carried this off, but for his tail, which, instead of being straight and rat-like, was as plumy as the Prince of Wales’s feathers, and curled unblushingly over his back, sideways, like a pug’s.  “It was a good one to wag,” his master said, and, apart from the question of high breeding, it was handsome, and Rufus himself seemed proud of it.
 
Since half-past three had Rufus sat in the porch, blinking away positive sleep, with his pathetic face towards the road down which Master Swift must come.  Unnecessarily pathetic, for there was every reason for his being the most jovial of dogs, and not one for that imposing melancholy which he wore.  His large level eyelids shaded the pupils even when he was broad awake; an intellectual forehead, and a very long Vandykish nose, with the curly ears, which fell like a well-dressed peruke on each side of his face, gave him an air of disinherited royalty.  But he was in truth a mongrel, living on the fat of the land; who, from the day that this wistful dignity had won the schoolmaster’s heart, had never known a care, wanted a meal, or had any thing whatever demanded of him but to sit comfortably at home and watch with a broken-hearted countenance for the schoolmaster’s return from the labors which supported them both.  The sunshine made Rufus sleepy, but he kept valiantly watchful, propping himself against the garden-tools which stood in the corner.  Flowers and vegetables for eating were curiously mixed in the little garden that lay about Master Swift’s cottage.  Not a corner was wasted in it, and a thick hedge of sweet-peas formed a fragrant fence from the outer world.
 
Rufus was nodding, when he heard a footstep.  He pulled himself up, but he did not wag his tail, for the step was not the schoolmaster’s.  It was Jan’s.  Rufus growled slightly, and Jan stood outside, and called, “Master Swift!”  He and Rufus both paused and listened, but the schoolmaster did not appear.  Then Rufus came out and smelt Jan exhaustively, and excepting a slight flavor of being acquainted with cats, to whom Rufus objected, he smelt well.  Rufus wagged his tail, Jan patted him, and they sat down to wait for the master.
 
The clock in the old square-towered church had struck a quarter-past four when Master Swift came down the lane, and Rufus rushed out to meet him.  Though Rufus told him in so many barks that there was a stranger within, and that, as he smelt respectable, he had allowed him to wait, the schoolmaster was startled by the sight of Jan.
 
“Why, it’s the little pig-minder!” said he.  On which Jan’s face crimsoned, and tears welled up in his black eyes.
 
“I bean’t a pig-minder now, Master Swift,” said he.
 
“And how’s that?  Has Master Salter turned ye off?”
 
“I gi’ed him notice!” said Jan, indignantly.  “But I shan’t mind pigs no more, Master Swift.”
 
“And why not, Master Skymaker?”
 
“Don’t ’ee laugh, sir,” said Jan.  “Master Salter he laughs.  ‘What’s pigs for but to be killed?’ says he.  But I axed him not to kill the little black un with the white spot on his ear.  It be such a nice pig, sir, such a very nice pig!”  And the tears flowed copiously down Jan’s cheeks, whilst Rufus looked abjectly depressed.  “It would follow me anywhere, and come when I called,” Jan continued.  “I told Master Salter it be ’most as good as a dog, to keep the rest together.  But a says ’tis the fattest, and ’ull be the first to kill.  And then I telled him to find another boy to mind his pigs, for I couldn’t look un in the face now, and know ’twas to be killed next month, not that one with the white spot on his ear.  It do be such a very nice pig!”
 
Rufus licked up the tears as they fell over Jan’s smock, and the schoolmaster took Jan in and comforted him.  Jan dried his eyes at last, and helped to prepare for tea.  The old man made some very good coffee in a shaving-pot, and put cold bacon and bread upon the table, and the three sat down to their meal.  Jan and his host upon two rush-bottomed chairs, whilst Rufus scrambled into an armchair placed for his accommodation, from whence he gazed alternately at the schoolmaster and the victuals with sad, not to say reproachful, eyes.
 
“I thought that would be your chair,” said Jan.
 
 “I thought that would be your chair...”
 
“Well, it used to be,” said Master Swift, apologetically.  “But the poor beast can’t sit well on these, and I relish my meat better with a face on the other side of the table.  He found that too slippery at first, till I bought yon bit of a patchwork-cushion for him at a sale.”
 
Rufus sighed, and Master Swift gave him a piece of bread, which, having smelt, he allowed to lie before him on the table till his master, laughing, rubbed the bread against the bacon, with which additional flavor Rufus seemed content, and ate his supper.
 
“So you’v............