I breathed freer. I privately hoped that all the hitch-ropes at the farm were rotten.
“Griz stands perfectly well without hitching,” I said as we drove home, “Why do you force an issue?”
“I didn’t. She did. She’s beaten me. If I don’t hitch her now, she’ll know she’s master.”
“Oh, dear!” I sighed. “Let her be master! Where’s the harm? It’s just your vanity.”
“Perhaps so,” said Jonathan.
When he agrees with me like that I know it’s hopeless.
The next night he wheeled in at the big gate bearing about his shoulders a coil of heavy rope.
“It looks like a ship’s cable,” I said.
“Yes,” he responded, leaning his bicycle against his side, and swinging the coil over his head. “I want it for mooring purposes. Think it’ll moor Griz?”
“Jonathan!” I exclaimed, “you won’t!”