It was on such an occasion, on a summer's day, that he said to her with a sigh, "Haying's going to begin to-morrow."
Henrietta Hen remarked that she wasn't at all interested in the news. "And I don't see why you should sigh," she added. "Goodness knows you'll eat your share of the hay—and probably more—before the winter's over."
"It's the work that I'm thinking of," Ebenezer explained. "They'll hitch me to the hayrake and Johnnie Green will drive me all day long in the hot hayfields. I always hate to hear the clatter of the mowing machine," he groaned. "It means that the hayrake will come out of the shed next."
Henrietta Hen caught her breath.
"The mowing machine!" she gasped. "Is Farmer Green going to use the mowing machine now?"
"Certainly!" said Ebenezer. "I hear he's going to harness the bays to it to-morrow morning."
"My! my!" Henrietta wailed. "Isn't there any way I can stop him from doing that?"
"I don't know of any," Ebenezer told her. "I've often felt just as you do about it. There's nobody that dreads hearing the mowing machine more than I do."
"You can't feel the way I do," Henrietta declared.
"On the contrary," the old horse insisted, "I don't see how it can matter to you in the least. You don't have to pull the mowing machine nor the hayrake. Besides, didn't you just tell me that my news about haying didn't interest you?"