“But you are, Galatea. Be charitable. You could do much worse than go through life in—in a Red Ripper. Noon, did you say?”
The Poet looked at his watch. “Why, it’s eleven-forty already. Hello! What’s the matter with our four-legged partners?”
Cleopatra, with Clarence at her side, had galloped up the driveway from the bottom of the pasture, and stopped, with head up, snorting loudly at something down the road. The colt could not snort as loudly as his mother, but he made up by snorting twice as often. Mrs. Cowslip and Gustavius, the bull-calf, quite in the dark as to the cause of the excitement, but willing to become excited themselves, were stopping en route to snatch an occasional mouthful of grass. Reginald’s short legs were flying in the distance, while he uttered plaintive squeaks at being left behind. The goat was giving him the assistance of an occasional butt in the right direction. Napoleon, rudely awakened out of a deep dream of peace, barked wildly from the edge of the veranda. Amanda came out of the kitchen, wiping her hands on her apron.
“For the land sakes, what ails the critters?” she asked of Gabriel, who had run up from the potato-patch, armed with his hoe.
Gabriel ran to the side of the colt, glanced down the road, and came back laughing.
“It’s one of them there hossless buggies,” he said. “The mare never could stand the sight of ’em, and the colt takes after her. They take it as a personal insult for a buggy to go humpin’ along like that without a hoss to pull it.”
“It’s Arthur,” said Galatea. “He’s made better time than he expected to, and he’ll be unbearable.”
The whirr of the wheels was now audible. Cleopatra and Clarence, with a final snort of rage, put their heads between their forelegs, slashed out vindictively behind, and galloped off to the far side of the driveway. The Red Ripper turned in swiftly from the road, giving Mrs. Cowslip the fright of her life as she plunged, bellowing, to the rear of her defiant equine comrades. At sight of the shining red enamel, Gustavius, for one instant, contemplated a valiant charge, but thought better of it barely in time to save his skin, if not his dignity.
As though to make the affront beyond all forgiveness, the driver of the red thing steered straight on toward the barn, then, describing a graceful circle about his outraged spectators, returned and came to an abrupt halt near the gateway. He lifted his cap to Galatea with easy grace, and jumped from his seat to take the Poet’s outstretched hand.
“Good boy. You did that with almost human intelligence.” The Poet’s eyes twinkled—the nearest approach to a smile in which he had ever been known to indulge.