"Honk!" said He.

   There was something, as I recall it, in the sweet
willingness of the Lady that was singularly appealing,
and contrasted with the dull mannerless passivity of the
swine.

   In each of the little stanzas that followed, the pretty
advances of the Lady were rebuffed by a surly and
monosyllabic "honk" from the hog.

   Here is the social counterpart of the scene in the
picture-book. Mr. Grunt, capitalist, is standing in his
tessellated sty,—the tessellated sty being represented
by the hardwood floor of a fashionable drawing-room. His
face is just the same as the face of the pig in the
picture-book. The willowy lady, in the same shimmering
clothes and with the same pretty expression of eagerness,
is beside him.

   "Oh, Mr. Grunt," she is saying, "how interesting it must
be to be in your place and feel such tremendous power.
Our hostess was just telling me that you own practically
all the shoemaking machinery factories—it IS shoe-making
machinery, isn't it?—east of Pennsylvania."

   "Honk!" says Mr. Grunt.

   "Shoe-making machinery," goes on the willowy lady (she
really knows nothing and cares less about it) "must be
absolutely fascinating, is it not?"

   "Honk!" says Mr. Grunt.

   "But still you must find it sometimes a dreadful strain,
do you not? I mean, so much brain work, and that sort of
thing."

   "Honk!" says Mr. Grunt.

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