But these lively times were coming to an end. One day, George’s father, who was a soldier, came home from the army and bought a house in town. His mother and his little boy went to live with him, and I was sold to a neighboring farmer.
CHAPTER IV.
My new master was not a bad sort of man, but he had what I thought was an unpleasant habit of making everybody work very hard. He used to harness me to a little cart, and make me carry earth and apples and wood and many other things. I began to grow lazy; I didn’t enjoy going in harness, and I disliked market-days very much. It wasn’t that they made me draw too heavy a load or that they beat me, but I had to go without anything to eat from morning till three or four o’clock in the afternoon. When the weather was hot I nearly died of thirst, and yet I had to wait till everything was sold, and my master had got all his money.
I wasn’t always good in those days. I wanted them to treat me kindly, and as they didn’t, I began to think of revenge. You see that donkeys are not always stupid, but you also see that I was growing bad.
On market-days in the summer the people at the farm always got up very early to cut the vegetables and gather the eggs and churn the butter, while I was still lying out in the meadow. I used to watch all this going on, knowing that at eight o’clock they would come and fetch me to be harnessed to the cart.
One day I determined to play them a trick.