“James, can you plough that corn-ground alone?”
“Yes, sir; with old Frank and Dick. I would not try it with the other horses.”
The next morning the two teams started at the same time. Bertie wanted to go and see James begin, but his father told him to keep away, as he had no doubt James would prefer to be alone.
Bertie was on tenter-hooks all the forenoon to know how his protégé got along, and kept chattering incessantly about it.
“Father, I saw him cut four alder sprouts as much as six feet long, with a little bunch of leaves left on the end, and then he stuck ‘em under the hame-straps on Frank’s collar.”
“That was to mark his land out. The sprouts are so limber that the horses will walk right over them without turning aside, and the tuft of leaves on top will enable him to see them between the horses’ heads.”
At eleven o’clock they stopped to rest the oxen, and Bertie improved the opportunity to climb a tree that he might be able to see James over the rising ground between them.
“Can you see him?” said Peter.
“I can’t see him, but he’s ploughing all right. Everything is going along just right.”
“How do you know that, my son, if you can’t see him?”