Aunt Phebe said it would be entirely convenient, and told her girls to shake out the sprinkled clothes to dry.
“O, now,” said Uncle Jacob, “who’d have thought of your saying ‘yes.’ I expected you couldn’t leave.”
Then they kept on talking and laughing. O, they are all so funny here! Uncle Jacob tried to get off without going; but at last he said, “Well, boys, we must catch Old Major.”
That’s the old gray horse, you know. And we were long enough about it. For, just as we got him into a corner, he’d up heels, and away he’d go. And once he slapped his tail right in my face. But after a while we got him into the barn.
Then pretty soon Uncle Jacob put on a long face, and looked very sober, and put his head in at the back kitchen door, and said he guessed we should have to give up going, after all, for the mate to Old Major had got to be shod, and the blacksmith had gone away.
“Harness in the colt, then,” Aunt Phebe said. “No matter about their matching, if we only get there!”
That colt is about twenty years old. He’s black, and short, and takes little stubby steps; and he’s got a shaggy mane, that goes flop, flop, flop every step he takes. But Old Major is bony, and has a long neck, like the nose of a tunnel. Such a span as they made! What would my mother say to see that span!
They were harnessed in to the hay-cart. A hay-cart is a long cart that has stakes stuck in all round it. We put boards across for benches. Aunt Phebe brought out a whole armful of quite small flags, that they had Independent Day, and we tied one to the end of every stake.
Such a jolly time as we did have getting aboard! First all the baskets and pails full of cake and pies were stowed away under the benches, and jugs of water, and bottles of milk, and a hatchet, and some boiled eggs, and apples and pears. Then uncle called out, “Come! where is everybody? Tumble in! tumble in! Where’s little Tommy?”
Then we began to look about and to call “Tommy!” “Tommy!” “Tommy!” At last Bubby Short said, “There he is, up there!” We all looked up, and saw Tommy’s face part way through a broken square of glass—I mean where the glass was broken out. He said he couldn’t “tum down, betause the roosted was on his feets.” You see, he’d got his feet tangled up in Lucy Maria’s worsteds.