Harrington had just got his garden planted for the season , and to go out one morning and find a horde of enterprising porkers rooting about in it was , to put it mildly , trying . He was angry , but as it was a first offence he drove the pigs out with tolerable calmness , mended the fence , and spent the rest of the day repairing damages . Three days later the pigs got in again . Harrington relieved his mind by some scathing reflections on women who tried to run farms . Then he sent Mordecai , his hired man , over to the Hayden place to ask Mrs. Hayden if she would be kind enough to keep her pigs out of his garden . Mrs. Hayden sent back word that she was very sorry and would not let it occur again . Nobody , not even John Harrington , could doubt that she meant what she said . But she had reckoned without the pigs . They had not forgotten the flavour of Egyptian fleshpots as represented by the succulent young shoots in the Harrington domains . A week later Mordecai came in and told Harrington that `` them notorious pigs '' were in his garden again . There is a limit to everyone 's patience . Harrington left Mordecai to drive them out , while he put on his hat and stalked over to the Haydens ' place . Ted and Bobbles were playing at marbles in the lane and ran when they saw him coming . He got close up to the little low house among the apple trees before Mordecai appeared in the yard , driving the pigs around the barn . Mrs. Hayden was sitting on her doorstep , paring her dinner potatoes , and stood up hastily when she saw her visitor . Harrington had never seen his neighbour at close quarters before . Now he could not help seeing that she was a very pretty little woman , with wistful , dark blue eyes and an appealing expression . Mary Hayden had been next to a beauty in her girlhood , and she had a good deal of her bloom left yet , although hard work and worry were doing their best to rob her of it . But John Harrington was an angry man and did not care whether the woman in question was pretty or not . Her pigs had rooted up his garden -- that fact filled his mind .
`` Mrs. Hayden , those pigs XXXXX yours have been in my garden again .
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