When the back doorbell rang an hour later, Jasmine ran to answer it. On the step stood her best friend, Tom, beaming with excitement.
“I can’t believe you’ve got your own piglet,” he said, before she even had a chance to say hello. “Where is she?”
He took off his boots and Jasmine led the way into the kitchen, knelt down, and opened the Aga door all the way.
Truffle was still lying on her side, but Jasmine was delighted to see that her eyes were open and she had stopped shivering.
Tom knelt beside Jasmine. His mouth fell open and his eyes grew very wide.
“She’s so tiny! I didn’t know pigs could be that small. She’s smaller than my guinea pigs.”
Jasmine laughed. “That is actually true,” she said. Tom’s guinea pigs were massive. Probably because Tom fed them two banquets of fresh fruit and vegetables every day, and they had an enormous run in the garden where they could munch on grass the rest of the time.
She lifted Truffle out of the Aga. “Mom just gave her an iron injection,” she said.
“Why, is she sick?”
“No, all day-old pigs get one. It keeps them strong. She was very brave. I held her while Mom injected her and she didn’t make a sound.”
“Can I hold her?” Tom asked.
Jasmine laid Truffle on Tom’s knees, and Tom stroked her smooth hair. He looked up at Jasmine, amazed. “She’s so silky and warm.”
Truffle raised her head and her little hooves started scrabbling around, as if looking for a foothold.
“Oh, my goodness,” said Jasmine. “I think she’s trying to stand up.”
Gently, she lifted Truffle and stood her on the tiled floor. The piglet wobbled a bit but she stayed upright, looking around curiously.
“She can stand!” said Jasmine. “Mom, come and look!”
Mom came into the kitchen with a basket full of laundry. “Oh, that’s a lovely sight. She’s definitely better. She won’t need to be in the Aga now.”
“Shall I put her back in my room?”
“You can for now. Just one more day, though, and then we’ll need to find somewhere on the farm for her.”
“Oh, but she’s too little. Look at her. She’ll get cold and lonely outside.”
“We’ll think of something, and we won’t let her get cold or lonely. But she needs to live outside once she’s running around, Jasmine. She’s going to get pretty messy once she starts eating properly, and she’s not house-trained. And no,” she said as Jasmine opened her mouth, “you are not going to attempt to house-train her. This house is chaotic enough as it is.”
“How did you know what I was going to say?”
Mom raised her eyebrows. “I know how your mind works. Now, I must get this laundry done.”
“Should I give her some milk?”
“After you’ve fed the hens.”
Jasmine scooped up the little pig. “Come on, Tom, let’s put her in my room while we feed the hens.”
“Well done, Jas,” said Mom. “You’ve done a great job with that pig. I think you have a talent for working with animals.”
Jasmine glowed. Mom only praised you if she really meant it.
Once they had put Truffle back in her box, Jasmine and Tom pulled on their coats and boots in the mudroom and opened the back door. It was freezing cold this morning, and there was ice on the puddles.
“Poor Bramble,” said Tom as they passed the kennel where the old spaniel sat looking out, her big brown eyes mournful. “She looks so sad without Bracken.”
“I know,” said Jasmine. “She’s out on the farm with Dad most of the time, but she must be really lonely when she’s in her kennel.”
They walked across the yard, smashing the ice on the puddles as they went. It was so much fun to jump onto the smooth ice as hard as you could, hear the satisfying crack, and watch as the muddy brown water beneath oozed through the splits. Jasmine’s other favorite thing was to tread really carefully over the ice, hearing it creak and groan under her weight, until it cracked a tiny bit and she could watch the cracks run across the surface of the puddle.
They came to the old cowshed on the other side of the yard, where the hens lived. Jasmine unbolted the top half of the door, opened it, and reached over to unbolt the bottom half. Inside, hens perched on the cobwebbed roof beams and sat in nests they had hollowed out of the deep earth floor.
As Jasmine opened the door, a shaft of morning sunlight spilled into the dim interior. Hens came running out of the shed on their spindly legs, eager for their breakfast. It was a sight that Jasmine never got tired of watching.
And the most eager of all was Blossom, who raced up to Jasmine and started rubbing against her boots.
“Can I feed them?” asked Tom.
Jasmine handed him the basket, which contained a tub of grain, some lettuce leaves, and a few pieces of stale bread. “Crumble the bread into little pieces,” she said, “and tear up the lettuce leaves.”
While Tom scattered handfuls of grain and crumbled-up crusts around the yard, Jasmine scooped Blossom into her arms. Blossom clucked and cooed as Jasmine stroked her. Her silky feathers were amazing shades of gold and brown, like autumn leaves, with black edges that looked as though they’d been dipped in ink.
“Shall we collect the eggs?” asked Tom when the basket was empty.
“I collect them in the afternoons,” said Jasmine. “They generally lay in the mornings.”
But Tom looked disappointed, so she said, “But you can go in and see if there are any.”
A few minutes later, Tom emerged triumphantly from the darkness with eight smooth, speckled eggs in the basket.
“Tom?” said Jasmine.
“Yes?”
“I’ve decided what I’m going to do when I’m grown up.”
“You’re going to have a chicken farm, aren’t you?”
“I’ve changed my mind. I’m going to have an animal rescue center.”
Tom’s eyes lit up. “Cool! Can I help?”
“You can run it with me. We’ll be partners.”
“Can we have guinea pigs?”
“We’ll have any animal that needs rescuing. Cats, dogs, lambs, piglets . . .”
“Lions, tigers, rhinos . . .”
“Lions and tigers might eat the guinea pigs. And we’d need lots of raw meat to feed them with.”
Tom nodded thoughtfully. “Farm animals and pets, then. That will be amazing.”
“We’ll have to have a farm for them.”
“Let’s look on the internet. My parents are always looking at houses on the internet.”
Jasmine looked at him, alarmed. “Why are they looking at houses? You’re not moving away, are you?”
Tom laughed. “No. They’re just obsessed with houses.”
“OK, let’s look for a farm,” said Jasmine. “And then we can make plans.” She scanned the yard excitedly. “And we should have an office. Where we can write down all our plans and put them up on the walls. We can find a shed. And you can come up every day over Christmas break to work on the plans.”
“I can’t. We’re going to my granny’s,” said Tom.
“To Cornwall? For the whole two weeks?”
“Yes. But I’m worried about the guinea pigs. I’ve never left them for two weeks before. My parents are looking for a boarding place, but what if the people aren’t nice?”
Jasmine turned to him with shining eyes. “Let me look after them! I love your guinea pigs and I’d take really good care of them.”
Tom’s eyes lit up, too. “Oh, would you? That would be amazing. Won’t your parents mind?”
“Why would they? I’d be the one doing all the work.”
“Let’s ask them,” said Tom.
“After we’ve fed Truffle,” said Jasmine.
She put Blossom down among the other hens, and they splashed back through the icy puddles. Bramble still looked mournful. Jasmine stroked her head sadly through the wire of the kennel door. “She needs a friend,” she said.
In the mudroom, Jasmine found the big tub of formula milk that Dad kept for the bottle-fed lambs.
“Smell this,” she said to Tom. “It’s so nice and sweet.”
Tom looked suspicious. “Are you tricking me?” He took a quick sniff. “Oh, that is nice,” he said in surprise. “It smells like cake.”
“Mmm,” said Jasmine, taking a long sniff. “It reminds me of lambing. I can’t wait.”
She washed out Truffle’s bottle and showed Tom how to make up the formula.
“That’s enough shaking,” she said finally. “Let’s take it to my — oh, no!” She gasped in horror and clapped a hand over her mouth.
“What?” said Tom.
But Jasmine had started to run. “The cats!” she wailed as she raced up the stairs. “I left my bedroom door open! What if they’ve attacked her?”
Picturing poor, defenseless little Truffle covered in bites and scratches, Jasmine burst through her bedroom door and darted around the end of the bed.
“Oh!” she exclaimed.
“What’s happened?” asked Tom, running into the room. “Is she OK?”
“Oh, Tom,” said Jasmine. “Look at this.”
Tom looked. “Oh!” he said. “That’s amazing.”
Jasmine ran to her bedroom door. “Mom!” she called. “Come and look at this.”
Mom emerged from her office, holding the phone in one hand and a letter in the other. “Is it important? I’m working.”
“It’s very important. It won’t take long, but there’s something you need to see.”
She took Mom’s arm and pulled her over to where Tom was kneeling beside Truffle’s box.
“Oh, my,” said Mom. “That is so sweet.”
The tiny pig lay asleep in the straw, breathing quietly and steadily. Curled around her, each twice her size and both fast asleep, too, were Toffee and Marmite. It was the most peaceful sight you could possibly imagine.
“Have you ever seen that before?” asked Jasmine. “Piglets and cats being friends?”
Mom shook her head, smiling. “Never,” she said. “That is really very special.”
Jasmine looked pleadingly at her mother.
“So you can’t turn her outside now, can you? She’s very special, you just said so.”
Mom laughed. “Nice try, Jasmine. You have to remember she’s a pig, not a cat or a dog. You saw the size of her mother. I know she’s tiny now, but she’ll grow very quickly. She’s not an indoor animal.”
Suddenly, Jasmine had a thought. It was so obvious she couldn’t believe she hadn’t thought of it before.
She looked up at Mom, her eyes full of excitement.
“Maybe she can’t live inside forever,” she said, “but I know someone she could live with outside. Someone who really needs a friend right now.”