Once, when Alice S---- was staying with me and we had no servants, she and I undertook to bake a very infantine and unweaned pig.

It was all properly arranged for us, and, making up a good fire, we proceeded to cook the little monster.
Hours passed by; all the rest of the dinner got itself properly cooked at the right time, but the pig presented exactly the same appearance at dewy eve as it had done in the early morn.

We looked rather crest-fallen at its pale condition when one o'clock struck, but I said cheerfully, "Oh, I daresay it will be ready by supper!" But it was not: not a bit of it.

Of course we searched in those delusive cookery books, but they only told us what sauces to serve with a roasted pig, or how to garnish it, entering minutely into a disquisition upon whether a lemon or an orange had better be stuck into its mouth.

We wanted to know how to cook it, and why it would not get itself baked.