‘I’m getting on,’ said the farmer, ‘don’t you hurry me! Well, one day, as ill-luck would have it, he rode that mare to market with a torn saddle, which galled her so, that when they got home she had a sore on her back as big as the palm of your hand.’
‘Yes,’ said the bunniah impatiently, ‘what next?’
‘It was June,’ said the farmer, ‘and you know how, in June, the air is full of dust-storms with rain at times? Well, the poor beast got dust in that wound, and what’s more, with the dust some grains of wheat, and, what with the dust and the heat and the wet, that wheat sprouted and began to grow!’
‘Wheat does when it gets a fair chance,’ said the bunniah.
‘Yes; and the next thing we knew was that there was a crop of wheat on that horse’s back as big as anything you ever saw in a hundred-acre field, and we had to hire twenty men to reap it!’
‘One generally has to hire extra hands for reaping,’ said the bunniah.
‘And we got four hundred maunds of wheat off that mare’s back!’ continued the farmer.