Free The Peppermint Pig by Nina Bawden Page B

side on the Soldier’s Grave and laughing fit to burst with their pet pig watching them, head on one side, as if wondering what they were laughing at. Some smiled as if they wondered too, but only one person stopped. He had followed them from the Square and was standing a little way off, hands in his pockets and a thoughtful look on his face. When Poll and Theo grew quieter, he sauntered forward, kicking a stone. It landed in a spurt of dust by Theo’s right foot and Theo looked up.
    ‘I doubt if your aunt would find it so funny,’ Noah Bugg said.
    Poll and Theo sat silent.
    Noah shook his head sadly. ‘Thievin’,’ he said. ‘Stealin’ from a poor market woman. What’s funny in that?’
    ‘I don’t know what you’re talking about,’ Theo said.
    Noah laughed. Rooks flew with clapping wings out of the dark trees above them and cawed overhead.
    Poll and Theo looked at each other. Then at Noah. They saw that his pale green eyes had darker green flecks round the pupils and that his gingeryeyebrows above them were curiously bushy and stiff, as if he were a grown man, not a boy.
    Theo looked at his boots. ‘Just one egg.’
    ‘One or a dozen, what’s the difference?’ Noah asked as if he really wanted to know.
    Theo scuffed his boots in the dust and Johnnie got up from his haunches as if he thought it was about time they went home.
    Noah’s gooseberry eyes gazed into distance. ‘’Course, we could ask Miss Greengrass. I reckon that’s the sort of question she’d find pretty interestin’.’
    Theo sighed.
    ‘I mean, she took us in Sunday School last year. Sometimes the Bible and sometimes what she called Morals. About tellin’ lies and stealin’, and that. Mind you, I don’t know as she’d like it if I asked her, exactly. Not seeing as it was her own nephew.’ He looked at Theo, eyes bright and spiteful. ‘My mother says your precious family thinks such a lot of themselves. A cut above other people!’
    Theo lifted his head. ‘Tell my aunt, then. Go on, go ahead! Or I’ll tell her myself. I don’t care!’
    He stood up, smiling calmly at Noah who took a step back, drawing those strange, heavy eyebrows together. ‘Come on, Poll, time we were moving. You’ll get a chill if we sit here much longer.’
    She shook her head dumbly. She was shivering, but not with the cold. All the things she had everheard or been told these last months, that she had not paid much attention to or only half understood, had suddenly come together in her mind and made frightening sense. They were dependent on Aunt Sarah until Father came home, or made his fortune in America and sent money back, and so they had to be good. If they weren’t, Aunt Sarah might decide not to keep them and they would have to go to the workhouse. And Aunt Sarah’s standards of goodness were unusually high. She had said, stealing is always wrong, even a sweet or a hairpin …
    Poll said, ‘She’ll care, Aunt Sarah will care, she will , Theo!’
    He shook his head, frowning to warn her, make her see it would be all right if they brazened it out, that if Noah believed they weren’t worried he would most likely do nothing. He was only tormenting: he’d be far too scared of Aunt Sarah to go sneaking to her…
    But Poll was scared now . She burst out, ‘Oh, please. Please, Theo, do stop him.’
    He looked at her, not understanding her terror, but impressed all the same. Poll was frightened – Poll , who was so much braver than he was about almost everything! It made him feel old and protective. Of course, there was one way to settle the matter. If only he were bigger – or not quite such a coward! He hesitated, measuring himself against Noah, and knew that even if he could screwup his courage to impossible limits the fight would be over in seconds. Noah was only a few months older than he was but it might just as well have been years: he was a child beside this strong, well-grown boy!
    Theo said, resigned, ‘Look, I’ll put the egg back . Will