“If I had known that, I would not have put on so much load. Did you have any trouble? Did James have to strike the horses, or did he get stuck?”
“He never struck them nor spoke to them, only chirruped, ‘cept once, and that was on Shurtleffs hill. The nigh wheel sunk into a hole into which they had hauled soft mud, and he said ‘Lift again Frank!’ Then old Frank straightened himself, and took it out with a great snort, and when he stopped him on top of the hill I could see the muscles on the old fellow’s shoulder twitch and quiver.”
“Did he talk with you any, going to the mills?” said the mother.
“Never opened his mouth from the time we started till we got there, but once; when he said it was a noble span of horses.”
“Then you think it is safe to send him with a team?”
“Safe, mother? he knows all about it. How to guide four horses or six, and the horses know it, and do what he asks ‘em to. Frank thinks he knows, and Dick does just as Frank tells him, for Dick hasn’t any mind of his own.”
“How do you know what Frank thinks?”
“Mother, you may laugh, but I know what Frank thinks just as well as I know what our Maria thinks. And he likes James, too; for when he hears his step he’ll begin to look, and when James pats him he’ll bend his neck and put his nose on his shoulder. Frank wouldn’t do that to anybody he didn’t like.”
“Shouldn’t think,” said Peter, “he’d be very good company on the road if he wouldn’t say anything.”
“When he sat down to eat he talked a lot. Said he never saw an ox yoked in England,—that they did all their work with horses; called ‘em bullocks and killed ‘em for beef; said they didn’t have any of our kind of corn there, and the farmers gave their horses beans for provender, and only a few oats, and that they fatted their hogs on peas and barley. He said the beans they gave their horses were larger than ours. That they had no woods, only scattering trees in the hedges, and all their land, except where it was too rocky to plough, was just like our fields. They would plough and plant and sow it ever so long, and then make pasture of it and plough up what was pasture before, and keep twice as many cattle on the same ground as we do.”