As the Goose Flies
Copyright© 2025 by Katharine Pyle
Chapter 3: The Five Little Pigs and the Goat
On and on went the white gander so smoothly and swiftly that the country slipped away beneath just as the leaves of a book do when they slip from under your finger too fast for you to see the print or pictures.
“I wonder what that is,” said Ellen as a spot of red shone out among the green beneath.
The gander stayed his wings so that Ellen could look.
It was a little red brick house. Around it were other houses that looked as though they were built of sods. They had chimneys and from two or three of these chimneys thin lines of smoke rose through the still air.
As the gander hovered above them from a knoll a little way beyond there suddenly sounded a shrill and piteous squeaking.
“Oh, what’s that?” cried Ellen. “It must be a pig and I’m afraid some one is hurting it. Oh dear!”
“Do you want to go and see mistress?” asked the gander.
Ellen said she did, so the gander turned in that direction.
When they reached the knoll they found that it was indeed a pig that was making the noise, but Ellen could not see why it was shrieking so. It sat there all alone under an oak tree and with its pink nose lifted to the sky and its eyes shut it wept aloud. The tears trickled down its bristly cheeks.
Suddenly it stopped squeaking, and getting up began quietly hunting about for acorns, and craunching them as though it found them very good.
“What’s the matter, you poor little pig?” asked Ellen, looking down at it from the gander’s back.
She had not spoken with any idea of receiving any answer.
The little pig looked up when he heard her voice. As soon as he saw her he sat down and began squeaking so shrilly that Ellen felt like covering her ears.
“Week! Week! Week!” he cried. “Can’t find my way home.”
For a moment Ellen was so surprised at hearing the pig speak that she could not say anything. Then she asked, “Where do you live?” But the pig did not hear her. “Where do you live?” she repeated in a louder tone; then she shouted, “Hush!” so loudly that the little pig stopped short with his mouth half open and the tears still standing in his eyes.
“Where do you live?” she asked for the third time.
“I live over by the wood in the little sod house next to the brick one,” answered the little pig.
“Well, isn’t that it there?” and Ellen pointed to the sod houses over which she had just flown.
The little pig looked. “Why, so it is,” he cried. Then curling up his little tail he trotted away in that direction.
The white gander flew beside him and Ellen talked as they went. “Why didn’t you see it before?”
“I was coming home from market with my brother; he’s quite a big pig; and I stopped to eat some acorns, so he said he wouldn’t wait for me any longer, and he went on and that lost me.”
“But if you’d just looked you would have seen it.”
“I couldn’t look because I was hunting for acorns, and then I began to cry, and then I hunted for some more acorns.”
It sounded so foolish, Ellen couldn’t help laughing. “I think I’d better go home with you or you may get lost again,” she said. Presently she asked, “How many brothers have you?”
“Four,” answered the pig. “One of them’s going to have roast beef for dinner.” Suddenly he sat down and began to cry again.
“What in the world’s the matter now?” asked Ellen in desperation.
“Oweek! Oweek! Maybe he’s eaten it all.”
“Well you’d better hurry home and see. If you keep on sitting here and crying, I know you won’t get any.”
This thought made the little pig jump up and start toward home as fast as his short legs would carry him.
When they reached the sod house next to the brick one another pig was standing in the doorway looking out. He was larger than Ellen’s companion.
He stared hard at the little girl and her gander, but when he spoke it was to the little pig. “You naughty little pig, why didn’t you come home?”
The little pig did not answer this question. “Has Middling finished his roast beef?” he asked.
“There’s some fat left.”
As the little pig hurried in through the door, Ellen asked of the other, “Is this your house?”
“Yes,” grunted the pig.
Three other pigs had appeared in the doorway by this time. They all stared at the little girl.
“It’s a dear little house,” said Ellen.
“Would you like to look inside?” asked the largest pig.
Ellen said she would.
She slipped from the gander and the pigs made way for her to go in; but she only looked through the doorway, without entering. The littlest pig was seated at a table eating beef fat as fast as he could. Ellen did not think he ate very nicely.
“It’s a dear little house,” she repeated.
Then she looked about her. At the window of one of the other houses she caught a glimpse of a head. It looked like a cat’s head.
“Who live in all these other houses?” she asked.
“Well, in that brick house lives another pig,” answered the pig they called Middling. “Sometimes he comes to see us, but he doesn’t have very much to do with us, because he’s in a story; a real story you know, and we’re only in a rhyme.”
“What story is he in?” asked Ellen.
“The story of the wolf that huffed and puffed and blew the house in. He had two brothers, and one built a house of leaves and one built a house of straw, and the wolf came and blew their houses in and ate them up, but this one built his house of bricks, so when the wolf came to it—”
“Oh, yes, I know that story,” interrupted Ellen, for she had heard it so often she was rather tired of it. “Who lives in the house beyond that?”
“The seven little kids. A wolf really did swallow them once, but their mother cut him open with her scissors while he was asleep and they all got out.”
“And who lives in the little furry house with the chimneys like pointed ears?”
“An old cat. She’s nothing but a rhyme. She’s very particular, though. Why, one time she was just as mad at her kittens, just because they lost some mittens she had knitted for them.”
So Middling went on talking of all the people who lived in the village, while Ellen listened and wondered. It seemed so strange she could hardly believe it was all true.
“What fun you must have together!” she said at last.
The pigs looked at each other and grunted. “We would have,” said a slim pig that the others called Ringling, “if it wasn’t for an old goat that lives in a cave down at the end of the street.”
“Oh, but he’s a naughty one,” broke in Thumbie, the fattest pig. “He’s always doing mischief and playing tricks on us.”
“That was a bad trick he played on you, Thumbie,” said Middling.
“What was that?” asked the little girl.
“Well, we were all away except Thumbie, and he was asleep in the doorway, and the old goat saw him and brought a paint pot and painted his back so it looked like a big fat face lying there. So when we came home we didn’t know what it was, and we were scared, but Thumbie woke up and began to get up, and Ringling she squeaked, ‘Run! run! Big face is after us,’ so we all began to run. Thumbie he saw us all running, so he got scared too, and he ran after us, and the faster we ran the faster he ran. After a while he tripped and fell, and then he began to cry and we knew who it was.”
“Oh, yes, he’s as mean as mean can be,” went on Middling. “Why, one time when our raspberries were ripe old Shave-head came here—”
“Who’s Shave-head?” interrupted Ellen.
“Oh, he’s the goat. Old Shave-head came here and asked if he couldn’t have some of our raspberries, and we said yes he could if he’d give us a present, and he said he would, so he went home and brought a big pannikin and put it on the table. It was covered.
“Then he went out in the garden and began to pick raspberries as fast as ever he could.
“We all sat round and wondered what was in the pannikin.
“Littlesie guessed it was acorns, and Thumbie thought it was apple parings, and I thought it was pancakes because it was in a pannikin.”
“And what was it?” asked Ellen, very much interested.
“Well, it was a joke,” said Middling slowly. “He’d fixed up a sort of big jumping-jack inside, and when we took off the lid it jumped out at us and said, ‘Woof!’ It scared us so we all squeaked and jumped back in our chairs, and the chairs upset and down we came, clatterly-slam-bang!”
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