"The boys like you, I see."
"And I like them. They do all they can for me. Rufus even helped me about the washing,—pounded and wrung out the clothes. You must stay to dinner to-day."
"I think I may have to," said Jack; "for my horse hasn't come back from Chicago yet, and I don't mean to go home without him."
When he went out he found the boys waiting, and accepted a seat with Wad and Link on a board placed across two of the tubs. Rufe walked by the cattle's horns; while in the third tub sat Chokie.
"You can't sit in that tub going back, you know," said Link.
"Yes, I can! I will!" And Chokie clung fast to the handles.
"O, well, you can if you want to, I suppose!" said Link; "but it will be full of water."
They passed the potato-patch (Jack smiled to see that the potatoes had been dug), crossed a strip of meadow-land below, and then rounded a bend in the river, in the direction of a deep place the boys knew.
"I always hate to ride after oxen,—they go so tormented slow!" said Link. "Why don't somebody invent a wagon to go by steam?"
"Did you ever see a wagon go by water?" Jack asked.