"Where did Daddy go with the axe?" Fen asked her mother as they cleared the table for breakfast.
"To the pigsty," Mrs. Arabel replied. "A couple of piglets were born last night."
"I don't see why he needs an axe." Fin, who is only eight years old, continued.
"Oh," said her mother, "one of them was a little one. It grew so small and weak that it had no value left to stay. So your father decided to go and destroy it."
"Wipe it out?" Fen screamed. "You mean kill it? Just because he's smaller than the others?"
Mrs. Arabelle put a can of cheese on the table. "Don't yell, Fin!" She said. "Your father did the right thing. That pig would have died no matter what."
Fin pushed aside the chair in front of him and ran for the door. The grass was wet and the dirt smelled like spring. By the time Fen caught up with her dad, her sneakers were all soaked.
"Please don't kill it!" She whimpered. "It's not fair!"
Mr. Arabel stopped dead in his tracks.
"Fen," he said gently, "it's time you learned self-control."
"Self-control?" Fen cried, "This is a matter of life and death! And you're telling me about self-control!" Tears streamed down Fen's cheeks. She grabbed the axe handle and tried to snatch it out of her father's hands.
"Fen," said Mr. Arabel, "I know more about raising piglets than you do. It's hard to keep a piglet in poor health. Now it's time for you to let me go!"
"But it's not fair," cried Fen. "Would this pig like to have been born small, would he? Would you have killed me if I had been born small, too?"
Mr. Arabel smiled. "Of course not," he said, lowering his head to look lovingly at his daughter. "But this is different. A little girl is one thing, and a little skinny pig is another."
"I don't see how it's different," replied Fen, still holding on to the handle of the axe with a death grip; "it's the most horrible case I ever heard of!"
A certain peculiar expression came over Mr. John Arabel's face. He seemed as if he were about to cry, too.
"All right," he said. "You go home first. When I get home, I'll bring that piglet back. I'll let you bottle-feed him like a baby. Then you'll see what trouble a little piggy can be."
Half an hour later Mr. Arabel returned home with a cardboard box under his arm. Fin was upstairs changing her sneakers. Breakfast was set on the kitchen table, and the room was filled with the scent of coffee , bacon, wet plaster, and the smell of wood smoke swinging from the stove.
"Put it on her chair!" Mrs. Arabel said. Mr. Arabel put the cardboard box on Fin's seat. Then he went to the sink and washed his hands, drying them with a towel on a poolside roller.
Fen slowly made her way down the stairs. Her eyes were still red because she had just cried. As she approached her chair, the cardboard box began to shake and a scratching sound came from inside. Fen looked at her father , then she lifted the lid of the box. It was the newborn piglet that surveyed her from within. It was white, and the morning sunlight made its ears pink.
"He is yours," said Mr. Arabel, "and you have saved him from death. May God forgive me for this folly."
Fenn looked at the tiny pig with good eyeballs. "Oh," she praised softly, "Oh, look at him! He's beautiful."
She closed the lid carefully. She kissed Papa and then Mama. Then she lifted the lid again and held the piglet up to her face. At that moment, her brother Everly walked in. Everly was ten years old. He was heavily armed - an air rifle in one hand and a wooden dagger clutched in the other.
"What's that?" He asked. "What's Fin got?"
"She's got a visitor for breakfast," Mrs. Arabel said. "Everly, go wash your hands and face!"
"Let me see it!" Everly said, lowering his gun. "You call this poor little thing a pig? It's nothing but a small replica of a pig - he's not as big as a white mouse."
"Go wash your face for dinner, Everly!" His mom said. "The school bus will be here in half an hour."
"Can I have a little piggy, too, Dad?" Everly asked.
"No, I only give piglets to early risers," Mr. Arabel said, "Fen got up at the crack of dawn in order to put a stop to the injustices of this world. As a result, she now has a little piggy. Of course, it's true that he's exceptionally small, but it's a little piggy anyway. It just goes to show what can happen if one can get out of bed quickly. Let's have dinner!"
But Fen wouldn't eat until her piglet had finished his milk. Mrs. Arabel found a baby's bottle and nipple. She poured the warm milk into the bottle and set the nipple in place before handing it to Fen. "Give him his breakfast!" She said.
A minute later, Fen sat down on the floor in the corner of the kitchen, took her little baby in her lap, and began teaching him how to drink from the bottle. The little piggy had a good appetite despite being so small, and was a quick learner too.
The horn of the school bus sounded on the road.
"Run!" Mrs. Arabelle commanded, taking Piggy down from Fin and placing a doughnut in her hand. Everly hurriedly grabbed his gun and another doughnut.
The children ran to the curb and got on the school bus. In the car, Fen didn't pay attention to the others. She just sat there looking out the window of the car, thinking about what a wonderful world it was and how lucky she was to have a little piggy. The moment the car pulled up to the school, Fen had already named her baby, picking the prettiest name she could think of.
"Its name is Wilbur." She murmured to herself.
When her teacher asked her in class, "Fin, what's the name of the capital of Pennsylvania?" She was still thinking about the piglet.
"Wilbur." Fen replied out of breath. The class grinned. Fen blushed.
Charlotte's Web II, Wilbur
Fen loved Wilbur more than anything. She loved petting him, feeding him, and carrying him to bed. Every morning, as soon as she woke up, she warmed his milk herself, then tied his bib and held the bottle for him. Every afternoon, when the school bus pulls up in front of her house, she jumps out and runs to the kitchen to prepare another bottle of milk for him. At dinner she would feed him again and again until it was time to go to bed. Every afternoon, Mrs. Arabel fed Wilbur for Fin just as he left for school. Although Wilbur loved milk, he felt great happiness only when Fen warmed it for him, and then he would stand up and look at her with affectionate eyes.
For the first few days after Wilbur's birth, he was allowed to live in a box by the kitchen stove. But then Mrs. Arabel began to complain that he should be moved to a larger house there in the woodshed. So at two weeks old he was moved outdoors. It was almost time for the apple trees to bloom and the weather was warming up. Mr. Arabel had circled a little yard especially for Wilbur under the apple-trees, and had built him a large straw-covered house in it, with a little door left under it, from which he could always go in and out if he pleased.
"Doesn't he get cold at night?"
"No," said her father, "you have only to see what he is all about."
Fin took a bottle of milk and sat down under the apple tree in the little yard. Wilbur immediately ran towards her and she held the bottle and fed him. After sucking the last drop, Wilbur snored contentedly and padded sleepily into the little house. Fen leaned over the doorway of the room and peered in. Saw Wilbur arching those straws with his nose. In only a little while he had dug out a pit among the straw. He climbed into the pit, completely covered by the straw, and disappeared from Fen's sight. Fen was mesmerized. She was relieved to know that her baby was sleeping comfortably and warmly.
Every day after breakfast, Wilbur walked down the road with Fen until the school bus came. When she waved and finished saying goodbye to him, he stood there looking at the car until it turned a corner and drove away. When Fen went to school, Wilbur was kept in his yard. But as soon as Fen came back in the afternoon, she would bring him out and he would follow her around. If she went into the house, Wilbur followed her inside; if she went up the stairs, Wilbur waited on the steps until she came down again; and if she went for a walk with her dolls in the stroller, Wilbur followed behind. Sometimes, when Wilbur got a little tired of walking, Fen picked him up and put him next to the doll in the car. He liked that a lot. If he was very tired, he closed his eyes and went to sleep under the blanket that was covering the doll. He looks extra cool when his eyes are closed because his eye hair is so long. The doll closes her eyes too. That's when Fin pushes the cart slowly and steadily so as not to shake her babies out of their sleep.
One warm afternoon, Fen and Everly put on their bathing suits and went for a swim in the creek. Wilbur, too, is close on Fen's heels, wading into the water with her. But the water felt cold to him - so cold that he disliked it very much. So when the children started swimming and teasing each other to play in the water, Wilbur played on the muddy ground by the river, where it was warm and wet and made him happy.
Every day was happy and every night was peaceful.
Because he was born in the spring, Wilbur was what farmers call a "spring pig". When he was five weeks old, Mr. Arabel said that he was now big enough to sell, and should therefore be sold. When Fen heard this, she burst into tears. Her father, however, insisted on selling Wilbur anyway. Wilbur had become a bigger eater, and in addition to milk he had begun to eat loose food, and Mr. Arabel was not willing to keep him any longer. He had already sold ten of Wilbur's brothers and sisters.
"He'll have to go, Fin," he said, "you've experienced the joys of keeping a piglet, but Wilbur isn't a piglet any more, and will have to be sold to do it."
"Call Uncle Zuckerman," Mrs. Arabel suggested to Fen, "Your Uncle Homer has raised pigs too. If Wilbur sells to him, you'll be able to go down the trail and see Wilbur-if you want to."
"How much should I ask him for?" Fin wondered this.
"How much should I ask," said her father, "he's so thin-looking. Tell your Uncle Homer that you have a little piglet, and sell it to him for six dollars only, and see what he has to say about it."
This was done in a moment. When Aunt Edith heard the call from Fin, she called loudly for Uncle Homer, who was working in the barn, to come and listen. When he heard that the piglet was selling for only six dollars, he said he had decided to buy it. The next day Wilbur was taken from his little house under the apple tree and lived under Mr. Zuckerman's barn, in the cellar, by the cow manure pile.
Charlotte's Web III, The Escape
The barn was big and old. It was full of the smell of hay and manure. There was also a kind of sweaty smell of tired horses running with the wonderful sweet smell of good-natured cows spewing out. Resident in the air was a scent of peace - as if nothing bad could ever happen in this world again. There is also the occasional scent of grain, of grass on a harness, of lubricating oil on a car, of rubber boots, or of freshly tied haystacks. The barn smells more like fish if the cat comes in here with a fish head people have thrown at him to enjoy. The strongest smell in here, however, was that of hay, because the big loft above the barn was always full of hay. This hay was constantly being thrown to the cows, horses, and sheep below.
In winter, when the animals stayed outside for a long time, they came back to the barn and felt very warm; in summer, when the barn door was wide open, the breeze blew in, and the place became indescribably cool. On the upper level of the barn there were stables and cow stalls, and in the lower cellar were sheep pens and a pigsty where Wilbur lived; inside there were all kinds of implements you could find in a barn: ladders, millstones, long-handled pitchforks, live hand-carriers, large scythes, lawnmowers, snow-shovels, axe handles, milk pails, buckets of water, empty grain sacks, rusty mousetrap traps, and so on. This was the barn where the swallows liked to nest. Everything here belonged to Fin's uncle, Mr. Homer L. Zuckerman.
Wilbur's new home is on the lower level of the barn, right under the cow shed. Mr. Zuckerman knew that the cow manure pile was a good place to raise piglets. Pigs like to be warm, and the south-facing cellar under the barn is just the place to be warm and cozy.
Fin came to see Wilbur almost every day. She found a milking stool that no one wanted, so she moved it next to the goat pen that was right next to Wilbur's pig pen. Throughout the long afternoons, she just sat there quietly, looking at Wilbur, thinking and listening. The sheep soon knew her and trusted her. So did the mother goose who lived with the sheep. All the animals trusted her because she was so quiet and kind. Mr. Zuckerman would not let her take Wilbur out or let her into the pigsty. He told Fin, however, that she could sit on a stool and watch Wilbur as long as she wanted. She felt happy to be near Wilbur; and Wilbur felt an immense pleasure in knowing that Fen was sitting right outside his house. But he can't do the things he used to do - no more walks, no more baby carriage rides, no more swimming.
One June afternoon, almost two-month-old Wilbur wandered into his yard outside the barn. Fin hadn't come to see him that day, as he usually did. Standing in the sun, Wilbur felt lonely and bored.
"Never had anything to do here," he thought. He slowly walked over to the trough and searched his nose, trying to find if there was any lunch he had forgotten. He found a small potato peel and ate it. Feeling a slight itch on his back, he leaned over the fence and rubbed hard against the boards. When he got tired of rubbing it, he walked back to his front door, climbed on top of the cow dung pile, and sat down. He didn't want to sleep, and he didn't want to arch around any more; he was tired of standing so still and stupid again, and tired of sleeping. "I've only been alive for less than two months and I'm sick of life." He said. He headed back out into the yard.
"When I come here," he said, "there's nowhere to go but home. When I get into my home, there's no place to hang out but the yard, either."
"You are wrong, my friend, my friend." A voice said.
Wilbur looked over the fence and found a mother goose standing right there.
"You don't have to stay in that dirty-small, dirty-small, dirty-small yard all the time," the mother goose said rather quickly. "There's a plank loose here. Push it away, push-push-push it away, and you'll be able to get out!"
"What?" Wilbur said. "Say it slower!"
"Jean-Jean-Jean, let me risk repeating myself," said the Mother Goose, "I meant to suggest that you run out. It's a wonderful world out here."
"You mean there's a plank loose?"
"That's what I'm saying, that is." Mother Goose said.
Wilbur walked over to the fence and realized that Mother Goose was right - there really was a board loose. He lowers his head, closes his eyes, and hits it hard. The plank came loose. It didn't take him a minute to squeeze through the fence and into the long grass outside the yard. Mother Goose quacked and laughed.
"How does it feel to be free?" She asked.
"I love it," Wilbur said. "I mean, I think I like the way it feels."
In fact, as Wilbur stood outside the fence, looking out over the great big world that was unobstructed from him, he had only a dreamy, indefinable feeling.
"Where do you think it would be better for me to go?"
"Anywhere you like, anywhere you like," said the Mother Goose. "Go to the orchard and turn out the sod on the road! Go to the garden and arch out the turnips! Arch over everything! Eat the grass! Look for corn kernels! Look for oats! Overwhelm everything! Bounce high and dance, jumping up on your hind feet! Walk through the orchard and go for a stroll in the woods! How wonderful the world was when you were young."
"I know what you mean," Wilbur replied. He leaped through the air, turned in a few circles, and ran a few more steps before he stopped, searching around, sniffing the afternoon air, and soon he was walking toward the orchard. He stopped in the shade of an apple tree, plunged his strong nose into the earth, and began to arch, dig, and dig to his heart's content. He felt a great sense of pleasure. He had dug up a great deal of earth before anyone noticed him. Mrs. Zuckerman was the first to see him. She looked out of the kitchen window and saw him and began to call out to someone.
"Ho-mer!" She shouts. "The pigs ran out! Luvvie! The pig ran out! Homer! Luvvie! The pig got away. He's under that apple tree."
"Now here's the trouble," thought Wilbur. "Now I'm going to get caught."
The Mother Goose heard her yelling too, and yelled at Wilbur. "Run-run-run downhill, towards the woods, the woods!" She yelled desperately. "They'll never-never-never catch you in the woods."
The shaggy dogs who heard the commotion ran out of the barn in pursuit. Mr. Zuckerman, hearing the shouts, bustled out of his workroom and dropped the farm implements he was repairing. Luvie, the hired man, who was pulling weeds in the loblolly field, heard the shouts and rushed out also. Everyone was closing in on Wilbur! Wilbur was at a loss for words. The way to the woods seemed so far away, and, as he had never been in the woods before, he wasn't sure if he would like to stay in them yet.
"Go around behind him, Luvie," said Mr. Zuckerman, "and drive him toward the barn! Be careful - don't scare him! I'll get a bucket of hog food."
The news of Wilbur's escape spread rapidly among the animals here. No animal had ever escaped from Mr. Zuckerman's farm before, so the story aroused great interest. Mother Goose yelled to the nearest cow that Wilbur was free, and soon all the cows knew the news. Then a cow told the news to a sheep, and soon all the sheep knew it too. The lambs in turn learned everything from their mothers. The horses in the barn's stalls, with their ears pricked up, also heard the Mother Goose's cry, so soon all the horses understood what had happened too. "Wilbur has escaped." They said. Every animal raised its head in excitement, and became distinctly agitated, for they knew that one of their friends had been set free, and no longer had to be kept tightly in a pen.
Wilbur didn't know what to do or where to run. It looked as if everyone was chasing him. "If this is wonderful freedom," he thought, "I might as well be locked up in my own yard."
The shaggy dog was leaning quietly from one side, and the hired man, Ruvie, was edging in from the other. Mrs. Zuckerman took up a stance ready to intercept - if Wilbur was going to run for the garden. Presently Mr. Zuckerman was coming towards Wilbur with his pail. "This is awful," thought Wilbur. "Why isn't Fin coming?" He began to cry.
Mother Goose gave Wilbur command after command.
"Don't just stand there, Wilbur! Run away, run away!" Mother Goose yells. "Jump in a circle, jump toward me, slip over and dash out, come over and out, come over and out! Run for the woods! Circle forward!"
The shaggy dog leapt up and bit at Wilbur's hind legs. Wilbur jumped up and ran away. Luvvie rushes forward to grab Wilbur. Mrs. Zuckerman screams at Luvvie. Mother Goose is still cheering for Wilbur. Wilbur escaped from between Ruvie's legs, and instead of catching Wilbur, Ruvie wrapped his arms around the shaggy dog. "Well done, well done!" Mother Goose called out. "One more, one more!"
"Run downhill!" The mother cows came up with ideas.
"Run toward me!" The geese screamed.
"Run uphill!" The sheep yell.
"Roundabout!" The mother goose quacked.
"Jump, jump high!" The rooster called.
"Watch out for the luvvies!" The cow warned.
"Watch out for Zuckerman!" The rooster shouts at the top of his voice.
"Watch out for the dog!" The sheep yells.
"Listen to me, listen to me!" Mother Goose screams.
Poor Wilbur was dazed and scared by their messy screams. He didn't like being the center of all this mess. He would have tried to follow the advice his friends were giving him, but he couldn't run both uphill and downhill at the same time, and besides, he couldn't jump up and meander at the same time, not to mention the fact that he was crying and screaming so hard that he could hardly make out what was going on all around him. Really, Wilbur was nothing more than a piglet not much bigger than a baby, after all. He only wished Fen was there at the moment to pick himself up and comfort him. He was only slightly relieved when he looked up and saw Mr. Zuckerman standing quietly beside him, carrying a pail full of hot, thin rice. He shrugged up his nose and sniffed hard. How delicious those smells were - there was hot milk, potato skins, couscous, Kellogg's cornflakes, and Mr. Zuckerman's leftover shortbread from breakfast.
"Come on, piggy!" Mr. Zuckerman said, knocking on the food bucket. "Come on, little piggy!"
Wilbur took a step toward the bucket.
"N-n-n-no!" Mother Goose said. "The bucket is a not-so-new trick, Wilbur. Don't fall for the trick! Don't fall for the trap! He's trying to trap you with it. He's tempting your belly with goodies."
Wilbur didn't care. The food smelled too appetizing. He took another step toward the food bucket.
"Piggy, piggy!" Mr. Zuckerman called sweetly, and began to walk slowly towards the barn, all the while making an innocent face and looking back as if he didn't know the little white pig was walking after him.
"You're going to regret-regret-regret." Mother Goose called.
Wilbur didn't care. He was still walking toward the food bucket.
"You'll lose your freedom," the Mother Goose yelled. "An hour of freedom is more valuable than a vat of pig food!"
Wilbur still didn't care.
When Mr. Zuckerman got near the pig pen, he climbed over the fence and dumped the pig food into the trough. Then he yanked the loose board all the way off the fence so Wilbur could get in easily.
"Think again, think again!" Mother Goose reminded.
Wilbur thought of nothing else. He took one step into the fence and out into his yard. He walked toward the trough and sucked half a dozen times, gulping down milk and chewing on shortbread. It was so good to be home again.
Just as Wilbur was getting his fill, Luvvie fetched a hammer and some eight-minute nails and nailed the board back together. Then he and Mr. Zuckerman leaned lazily against the fence. Mr. Zuckerman tickled Wilbur's back with a twig of firewood.
"He's such a pig." Luvvie said.
"Yes, he'll make a good pig." Mr. Zuckerman said.
Wilbur heard the praise for him. He felt the milk warm in his stomach. He would have loved to rub his itch on that firewood branch, too. He was both happy and content and wanted to go to bed. It had been a tiring afternoon. Though it was but four o'clock at the moment, Wilbur was ready to go to bed.
"I'm really too young to be out in the world alone." He thought to himself as he lay down.
Shiloh's Web IV, Loneliness
The next day was a dreary, rainy day. Beads of rain fell on top of the barn and slid off the roof in drops. Raindrops fell to the ground next to the barn, splashing and jumping all the way to the inside of the path filled with prickly and gray cabbage. The rain gently tapped against Mrs. Zuckerman's kitchen window and gurgled down the glass. It also fell on the backs of the sheep grazing in the meadow. When the sheep got tired of eating in the rain, they slowly made their way back down the path to the sheepfold.
The rain had disrupted all of Wilbur's plans. Today Wilbur had planned to go out for a walk and dig a new hole in his yard. And he had other plans. All his plans for the day were roughly as follows:
Breakfast at 6:30am. Breakfast consisted of skim milk, bread crumbs, couscous, a small piece of fried doughnut, wheat cake with maple syrup on top, potato skins, small pieces of pudding studded with raisins, bits of cereal. Breakfast will be over at seven.
From seven to eight, Wilbur intended to talk to Templeman, the rat who lived under his trough. While talking to Templeman isn't the most fun thing in the world, it's at least better than doing nothing.
Between eight and nine, Wilbur wanted to take a nap outside in the sun.
Between nine and eleven, he was going to dig a hole, or a little ditch would do, and maybe he could turn up something tasty out of the dirty dirt.
From eleven to twelve, he just wanted to stand in silence, looking at the flies on the boards, the bees among the alfalfa flowers, and the swallows in the sky.
Twelve o'clock - time for lunch. Lunch consists of couscous, warm water, apple skins, gravy, sharp carrots, minced meat, kernels of stale corn, and peeled cheese. The meal will end at one o'clock in the afternoon.
From one to two Wilbur intended to sleep.
From two to three, he was going to rub on the fence.
From three to four, he intends to stand silently and perfectly still on the ground, think about what the joys of life really are, and wait for Fin to come and see him.
Dinner at four. Dinner consisted of skimmed milk, leftovers, leftover sandwiches from Luvvie's lunchbox, dried plum skins, a little slice of this, a little piece of that, and chips, thin jam, a bit of dried apple, a piece of cake, and so on and so forth.
Last night Wilbur went to bed thinking about these plans. But when he opened his eyes at six o'clock this morning, he saw that it was raining outside, and that was more than he could bear.
"How perfectly I've made my plans, and it's raining." He said.
He stood sadly in the house for a while. Then he went to the door and looked out. The raindrops hit his face. His yard was cold and wet. His food trough was an inch thick with rainwater. There was no telling where Templeman had gone to hide.
"Are you there, Templeman?" Wilbur shouted. No one answered him. Steeply, Wilbur felt so alone and helpless.
"Today is as boring as yesterday," he sighed. "I'm very young, I've got no real friends in the barn, and it's going to rain all morning, if not all afternoon, and Fen probably won't come out in such bad weather. Alas, she will not come!" Wilbur was so sad that he cried again, and he had cried twice in the last two days.
At half-past six Wilbur heard the sound of the food-bucket shaking. Luvvie was outside in the rain preparing breakfast for himself.
"Come and eat, little piggy!" Luvvie said.
Wilbur didn't even bother to move. Luvvie poured the feed into the trough and scraped the bucket wall again before walking away. He noticed that something seemed to be wrong with the piglet.
What Wilbur wanted wasn't food, it was care. He wanted a friend-someone he could hang out with. He spoke this mind to the Mother Goose, who was sitting quietly in the corner of the sheep pen.
"Will you come and play with me?" He asked.
"I'm sorry, baby, I'm sorry," said the mother goose." I'm hatching my eggs right now. There are eight of them **** and they have to be kept dry-dry-dry and warm at all times. So I have to stay here and I can't go-go-go away. I can't play while I'm hatching my eggs. I'm looking forward to hatching the geese sooner."
"Of course, I bet you wouldn't want to hatch a bunch of woodpeckers." Wilbur said sourly.
Wilbur tried the lamb again.
"Will you come and play with me?" He pleaded.
"Of course you can't," said one of the lambs. "First of all, I can't get into your yard because I'm too young to jump the fence. And secondly, I'm not interested in pigs at all. As I see it, a pig is more than nothing."
"What do you mean it's less than nothing?" Wilbur replied. "I don't think there's anything that's less than nothing. 'Nothing' isn't to the top already, that's definitely the top of heaven and earth, the end of the world. How can there be anything less than nothing? If you are right, then 'nothing' should be something, even if it is just a little bit. But if 'nothing' is 'nothing,' then you can't find anything that would be less than nothing." (1)
"Gee, that's noisy!" The lamb said. "Go play on the side by yourself! I just don't play with pigs."
Wilbur lay down sadly and went to listen to the rain. Soon he saw that the rat was climbing down a plank which he called himself a staircase, and which had been placed there at an angle.
"Will you play with me, Templeman?" Wilbur pleaded.
"Play?" Templeman said, twirling his mustache. "Play? I don't even know what that word means."
"Oh," Wilbur said, "to play is to make a game, to romp, to run and jump, to have fun."
"I never want to waste time on such things." Rat replied coldly. "I'd rather spend my time eating, biting, stealing, and hiding. I'm a gluttonous rat, not a gamist. I'm going to go eat breakfast from your trough, which you don't want to do now anyway." With that, Templeman the mouse crawled down the crack in the wall and into the secret passage he had cut through the door and the trough. Templeman was a very cunning rat, and very much a bit of a clever trickster. This passage was but a proof of his cunning and skill in digging. The passage would enable him to go back and forth between the barn and his own hiding place under the hog food trough without having to show his face in plain view of the barn. He had dug a number of tunnels on Mr. Zuckerman's farm so that he could come and go at will without being detected. Usually he sleeps during the day and comes out late at night.
Wilbur watched him crawl into the passage. An instant afterward, he saw the rat's pointed snout poking out from under the wooden food trough. Templeman carefully crawled in along the side of the trough. Wilbur could hardly stand it any longer: who wants to see his breakfast eaten by someone else on a sad, rainy day? He knew that the rain outside was pouring down on Templeman, who was chewing there, but that wouldn't have comforted him in any way. Helpless, disillusioned and hungry ...... he slumped down in the cow dung heap and sobbed.
In the evening, Luvi went to see Mr. Zuckerman. "I think there's something wrong with your pig. He's not eating."
"Give him two spoonfuls of sulphur with some sugar water in it." Mr. Zuckerman said.
Wilbur couldn't believe all this was happening to him when Luvvie grabbed him and forced the potion down his throat. This was the worst day of his life. He didn't know if he could stand this terrible loneliness any longer.
Darkness haunted everything. Soon there was nothing to feel but the shadows and the sound of sheep chewing and the clattering of cows pulling their chains overhead. So you can surely imagine Wilbur's surprise when a slender voice, never heard before, came out of the blackness. It was quite a faint voice, but so delightful to hear. "Would you like a friend, Wilbur?" The voice said. "I will be your friend. I have been watching you for days, and I like you."