Pig by Roald Dahl

Author:Roald Dahl
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Published: 2011-12-13T13:59:29+00:00

VIII

The packing-house was a big four-storey brick building, and the air around it smelled sweet and heavy, like musk. At the main entrance gates, there was a large notice which said "VISITORS WELCOME AT ANY TIME", and thus encouraged, Lexington walked through the gates and entered a cobbled yard which surrounded the building itself. He then followed a series of signposts "THIS WAY FOR THE GUIDED TOURS", and came eventually to a small corrugated-iron shed set well apart from the main building "VISITORS WAITING-ROOM". After knocking politely on the door, he went in.

There were six other people ahead of him in the waiting-room.

There was a fat mother with her two little boys aged about nine and eleven. There was a bright-eyed young couple who looked as though they might be on their honeymoon. And there was a pale woman with long white gloves, who sat very upright, looking straight ahead with her hands folded on her lap. Nobody spoke. Lexington wondered whether they were all writing cooking-books, like himself, but when he put this question to them aloud, he got no answer. The grown-ups merely smiled mysteriously to themselves and shook their heads, and the two children stared at him as though they were seeing a lunatic.

Soon, the door opened and a man with a merry pink face popped his head into the room and said, "Next, please," The mother and the two boys got up and went out.

About ten minutes later, the same man returned." Next please, "he said again, and the honeymoon couple jumped up and followed him outside.

Two new visitors came in and sat down-a middle-aged husband and a middle-aged wife, the wife carrying a wicker shopping basket containing groceries.

"Next, please," said the guide, and the woman with the long white gloves got up and left. .

Several more people came in and took their places on the stiff backed wooden chairs.

Soon the guide returned for the third time, and Lexington's turn to go outside.

"Follow me, please," the guide said, leading the youth across the yard toward the main building.

"How exciting this is!" Lexington cried, hopping from one foot to the other. "I only wish that my dear Aunt Glosspan could be with me now to see what I am going to see."

"I myself only do the preliminaries," the guide said. "Then I shall hand you over to someone else."

"Anything you say," cried the ecstatic youth.

First they visited a large penned-in area at the back of the building where several hundred pigs were wandering around. "Here's where they start," the guide said. "And over there's where they go in."

"Where?"

"Right there." The guide pointed to a long wooden shed that stood against the outside wall of the factory. "We call it the shackling-pen. This way, please."

Three men wearing long rubber boots were driving a dozen pigs into the shackling-pen just as Lexington and the guide approached so they all went in together.

"Now," the guide said, "watch how they shackle them."

Inside, the shed was simply a bare wooden room with

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