"I shall be most happy to attend you."
"You see, Mr. Thing-a-my, this is my first lesson, and you must make all allowances, if there should be any trouble, or that all should not go right. You see one seldom gets the hang of it the first night, no how. I have been farming most of my life, but I quits that about five weeks ago, and have been studying hard for my profession ever since. I have got a large school here, another at A--- and another at L---; and before the winter is over, I shall be qualified to teach at W---. I play the big bass fiddle and the violin right off, and--"
Here a little boy came running up to say that his father's sheep had got out of the yard, and had gone down to Deacon S---; and, said he, "The folks have sent for you, Mister Browne, to cum and turn 'em out."
"A merciful intervention of providence," thought I, who was already heartily weary of my new acquaintance, and began to be afraid that I never should get rid of him. To tell the truth, I was so tired of looking up at him, that I felt that I could not converse much longer with him without endangering the elasticity of my neck, and he would have been affronted if I had asked him to walk in and sit down.
He was not very well pleased with Deacon S---'s message.
"That comes of borrowing, mister. If I had not asked the loan of the pee-a-ne, they never would have sent for me to look arter their darned sheep. I must go, however. I hope you'll be able to keep yourself alive in my absence. I have got to string up the old fiddle for to-night. The singing-school is about a mile from this. I will come down with my old mare arter you, when its just time to be a-goin'. So good-bye."
Away he strode at the rate of six miles an hour; his long legs accomplishing at one step what would have taken a man of my dimensions three to compass. I then went into the hotel to order dinner for my friends, as he had allowed me no opportunity to do so. The conceited fellow had kept me standing a foot deep in snow for the last hour, while listening to his intolerably dull conversation. My disgust and disappointment afforded great amusement to my friends; but in spite of all my entreaties, they could not be induced to leave their punch and a warm fire to accompany me in my pilgrimage to the singing-school.
We took dinner at four o'clock, and the cloth was scarcely drawn, when my musical friend made his appearance with the old mare, to take me along to the school.
Our turn-out was everything but prepossessing. A large unwieldy cutter of home manufacture, the boards of which it was composed unplained and unpainted, with rope harness, and an undressed bull's hide by way of buffalo's, formed our equipage. But no description that I could give you would do justice to the old mare. A sorry beast she was--thick legged, rough coated, and of a dirty yellow-white. Her eyes, over one of which a film was spread, were dull as the eyes of a stale fish, and her temples so hollow, that she looked as if she had been worn out by dragging the last two generations to their graves. I was ashamed of adding one more to the many burdens she must have borne in her day, and I almost wished that she had realized in her own person the well-known verse in the Scotch song--
"The auld man's mare's dead,