"That's no good," panted Jonathan; "get your stick again. Now, when I pull, you hit her behind, and she'll come. I guess she hasn't been taught to lead yet."
"If she has, she has apparently forgotten," I replied. "Now, then, you pull!"
The creature moved on grudgingly, with curious and unlovely sidewise lunges and much brandishing of horns, where the rope was tied.
"Hit her again, now!" said Jonathan. "Oh, hit her! Hit her harder! She doesn't feel that. Hit her! There! Now, she's coming."
Truly, she did come. But I am ashamed to think how I used that stick. As we progressed up the road, over the hill, and down to the lower pasture, there kept repeating themselves over and over in my head the lines:—
"The sergeant pushed and the corporal pulled,
And the three they wagged along."
But I did not quote these to Jonathan until afterwards. There was something else, too, that I did not quote until afterwards. This was the remark of a sailor uncle of mine: "A man never tackled a job yet that he didn't have to have a woman to hold on to the slack."
So much for Sunday business. But it should not for a moment be supposed that Sunday is full of these incidents. It is only for a little while in the morning. After the church hour, about eleven o'clock or earlier, the farm settles down. The "critters" are all attended to, the chicks are stowed, the cat has disappeared, the hens have finished all their important business and are lying on their sides in their favorite dirt-holes enjoying their dust-baths, so still, yet so disheveled that I used to think they were dead, and poke them to see—with what cacklings and flutterings resulting may be imagined. I have often wished for the hen's ability to express indignation.
Yes, the farm is at peace, and as we sit under the big maples it seems to be reproaching us—"See how quiet everything is! And you couldn't even manage church!"