“With this small whip, Miss, and my directions,” replied the man.
“Poor things!” said Nancy, after they had climbed back into the bus again. “They look so sad, and lumber along so bent down that it really is depressing. The expression in their eyes is truly pathetic. I almost wish I hadn’t gotten out to look at them.”
The girls laughed, but Jim looked down understandingly at Nancy. Jim, who slowed down the big bus to almost a standstill if even a chicken crossed the road in front of it!
“These people,” he said, after a moment, “are very proud of their fine oxen, and take pains to have them perfectly matched. If one of a team happens to die, they travel all over the country, if need be, to find an exact match for the survivor.”
“Why do they prefer them to horses, I wonder,” said Miss Ashton.
“Because they are cheaper to feed. They are peculiar to Nova Scotia; for nowhere else in Canada are they still used.”
The fog billows gathered themselves together, and rolled along the surface of the water, closer and closer to the land.
“What are those?” asked Nancy, pointing to a stack of crate-like objects near a fisherman’s hut.
“Lobster pots,” said Jim; “and that pile of stakes with the ball-like colored tops are markers.”
At the next pile, which happened to be close beside the road, he stopped and got out; and they all followed him to see what the strange looking cages were really like.