VIIIA PIECE OF STRING
Theold horse Ebenezer struggled forward, trying to pull both the wagon and his stubborn mate, Mistah Mule. But Farmer Green soon called, “Whoa, Ebenezer!” And then Ebenezer stood still.
Farmer Green sat upon the wagon-seat, looking down at Mistah Mule, when the miller, all white with flour, came to his door and peered out.
“What! Are you still here? I thought you had gone,” he said.
“This mule,” Farmer Green explained, “likes your place so much he doesn’t want to go home.”
“Balky, eh?” the miller inquired with a grin. “Well, it’s a nice day. I wish I had nothing to do but sit out there in the sunshine.”
“I don’t expect to sit here long,” Farmer Green replied. “Just let me have a bit of string, please!”
The miller passed him a piece of the twine that he used for tying his meal sacks.
Mistah Mule paid no heed to this talk, nor to what happened. His mind was full of one idea. And that was that nobody should make him stir a single step until the sack of corn was taken out of the wagon. With all four legs planted firmly upon the ground, with his head hung low and his long ears drooping, he looked very silly, and sulky, and stubborn.
“Come!” Ebenezer urged him. “Don’t make trouble for Farmer Green!”
“Save your breath!” Mistah Mule retorted. “I knows what I wants to do. An’ if they whips me, I’se a-goin’ to kick.”
“My! my!” said the old horse Ebenezer to himself. “I hope none of my friends sees me harnessed with this terrible person. I’m ashamed to be hitched to the same wagon with him.”
Meanwhile Farmer Green had jumped out of the wagon. And now he stood at Mistah Mule’s head. Watching, Ebenezer saw him tie the short length of cord tightly about Mistah Mule’s right ear.
“What for did he do that?” Mistah Mule asked Ebenezer.
“I don’t know,” Ebenezer replied. “Nothing like that ever happened to me.”
“This string certainly do feel queer on my ear,” Mistah Mule muttered.
Then Farmer Green climbed into the wagon again. “Giddap!” he said once more. And this time both Ebenezer and Mistah Mule started together. They walked out of the gristmill yard and trotted up the road towards home.
Mistah Mule had thought so much about that string around his ear that he had forgotten to be balky anymore!