“I stuck up my marks, and then I drove the horses twice back and forth over the ground, before I put the plough to ‘em. Don’t you know that when a horse goes over ground the second time he always wants to step in the same tracks?”
“No.”
“Well, he does, and if another horse has been along, to step in his tracks. Did you never notice in the lanes and wood roads, how true the lines of grass are each side of the horse?”
“Yes.”
“They wouldn’t be, if horses didn’t want to go in the same track. The horses could see their tracks in the soft ground, and when I came to put the plough to ‘em, knew what I wanted, and that helped me to guide ‘em. Horses go in the main road because in the first place folks make ‘em go there, and when the ruts get worn, the carriage keeps them there, and it is easier than to cross the ruts. But in the pastures the horses and cattle always have their beaten paths, and nobody makes ‘em go in them, yet they always go in them,—and all go in them,—they wouldn’t be horses if they didn’t.”
“What did you do with the reins?”
“Flung ‘em over my neck.”
CHAPTER IX.
THE REDEMPTIONER AT MEETING.
While James was thus giving new proofs of capacity for usefulness, Mrs. Whitman had woven a web of cloth, sent it to the mill where it was colored and pressed, and had made James a suit of clothes for meeting, and a thick winter overcoat, and Mr. Whitman had bought him a hat.
Sunday morning came, Mrs. Whitman gave the clothes to James and told him to go up stairs and put them on, that she might see how they fitted. While the children, enjoying his dazed looks, were bursting with repressed glee, Bertie capered around the room at such a rate that Peter said he acted like a fool.