“Because, father, I can see the heads and part of the necks of the horses, and they are going round and round as regular as can be. They are stepping lively, too, and every now and then old Frank keeps flirting up his head just as he does when he feels about right and everything suits him. You know how he does?”
“No, I don’t know, for I don’t take so much notice of Frank’s ways as you do.”
When they left work at noon, and while his father and Peter were tying up the oxen, Bertie scampered off to the field where James had been at work and came back in most exuberant spirits. After dinner he could not be satisfied unless his father went out to see the ploughed ground, and to his great delight his grandfather accompanied them.
The ground was a hazel loam, free of stones, and James had turned a back furrow through the middle as straight as an arrow. The furrows were of equal width; there were no balks, and it looked like garden mould. Mr. Whitman was very much gratified, as Bertie knew by his looks, though he merely observed,—
“That is good work.”
“It is as good a piece of work as I ever saw done,” said the grandfather.
When night came Bertie importuned James to tell him how he drove the horses so straight the first time going round, when they had no furrow to guide them and held the plough at the same time.
James, in ridicule of Bertie, who was so fond of imputing human intelligence to Frank, and with a sly humor, of which he had never manifested a trace before, said,—
“I told old Frank I had never tried to plough alone before, and wanted to plough a straight furrow, and I asked him if he wouldn’t go just as straight for the marks as he could, and so he did.”
“Oh, now you’re fooling; come tell me.”