"Of course they won't," she said wryly. "They will say that they are only pigs, and I am only a female— but pigs are most intelligent and feeling, I assure you. I taught one to play a wooden f lute once."

"A f lute!"

She nodded. "I secured it between a pair of fire dogs, and he soon learned that he could procure a bit of molasses if he made a note upon it. I stopped the holes for him, and he would play 'Baa Baa Black Sheep.'"

"Mon dieu." He shook his head. "And I was not there to see it." He slid his fingers between hers, so that their hands were clasped where they rested on his arm. She tilted her head aslant, glancing up at him, but he could not detect her expression through the veil. He wasn't sure if she knew just how difficult it had been for him to break off from their lovemaking. He was in a state of exquisite torment even to walk beside her, with her shoulder brushing his at every step. It was he who had conceived this grand plan of a manufactured marriage, but he found now that what had seemed as if it would be a diverting amusement was in fact a bittersweet ordeal.

If they had been married in truth, he would not have been strolling through a street full of straw and bawling calves, that was a certainty. He would have had her on the sofa—no, not the sofa, in the bed, stretched out on the sheets in very daylight, a long and slow and leisurely discovery of her white skin and golden red curls.

"I shall write to the officers of the Agricultural Society, in any event," she continued. "I would even—" She paused. "Well, they would never invite me to speak at the monthly meeting, so I needn't fear that, but I would."

He really very badly wanted to pull her up against him right there in the midst of the street and kiss her ruthlessly. "You are a heroine," he said, lifting her fingers brief ly to his lips. "A heroine of overstout pigs everywhere!"

"I doubt even the pigs would thank me," she admitted with a rueful chuckle. "I'm sure they like their liberal dinners."

"Then you are my heroine," he said warmly.

Her fingertips moved slightly under his as she peeked up at him. He found that their slow stroll had stopped somehow; he was distantly aware of geese honking from inside their crates to his left, and a woman carrying a red hen on his right, but he stood looking down at Callie like a callow boy gazing helplessly at the adored object of his affections, unable to see more than a hazy shadow of her face but knowing just what her shy sparkling smile was beneath the veil.