was laughable.

"What a teamster he will make!" I heard him saying to the girls. "He
talks to old Bright as if he was afraid of hurting his feelings by
swinging the goad-stick so near his head. Next thing he will say, 'Beg
your pardon, Broad, but I really must rap your head and ask you to gee,
if it will not be too much trouble.'"

They all laughed at Halse's joke, not unkindly, yet I can hardly
describe how much it wounded my vanity and how incensed I felt with the
joker. Slowly the oxen moved away out of hearing. Even my instructor,
Addison, lagged a little behind to indulge in a broad smile. Glancing
backward, I detected his amused expression and was almost minded to
fling away the goad-stick; and I did not feel much reassured when he
remarked that I did very well for a beginner.

"Don't mind what Halse says," Addison continued. "He cannot drive a
cart through a gateway himself without tearing both gate-posts down."

There was solace in that statement. The oxen were very steady and well
broken; and I contrived to drive the cart across the field and down
through the pasture to the brook without much difficulty, although I
noticed several times that old Bright rolled the white of his eye up to
me, in a peculiar manner, as if something in my movements was puzzling
to the bovine mind. I asked Addison whether he did not think that the
oxen had very handsome eyes, for they seemed to me exceedingly soft and
lustrous.

"Yes," replied he, "all cattle have just such large, fine eyes." But he
appeared to be somewhat amused at the way I spoke of it; for the thought
had struck me that it was strange and not quite clear why cattle should
have eyes so much finer and more lustrous than human beings. I ventured
to ask Ad's opinion on that subject, as we were taking out the pipe
beside the brook. "Well," he replied, still laughing, "perhaps it is
because their lives are simpler and they don't have so much evil in them
as human beings do. But I recommend you to ask Elder Witham about that
the next time he spends the night here."

We now took the pipe out of the cart and chained up the oxen to the nigh
cart-wheel. Addison then explained to me his method of warming the water
for washing the sheep. From the dam which formed the Little Sea, there
was a considerable descent in the brook for some distance; and Addison's
device consisted in laying the pipe from the pond above the dam, so as
to carry water to two half-hogshead tubs, nin