"Why did you?" she repeated.
"I can't beat a dumb brute when it's doing its best," he said, looking away from her, shy and ashamed.
"But the wagon would have gone down to the bottom of the hill. It was going."
"What would that have mattered? We could have taken some of the things out and carried them up afterwards. When a horse does his best for you, what's the sense of beating the life out of him when the load's too heavy. I can't do that."
"Was that why you threw it down?"
He nodded.
"You'd rather have carried the things up?"
"Yes."
She laid the sticks one on the other without replying and he said with a touch of pleading in his tone:
"You understand that, don't you?"