XMINDING TOO WELL
Johnnie Greenrode Mistah Mule into the meadow. Mistah Mule seemed to be, as Farmer Green had said, a fine saddle animal. He had an amble that was as gentle as the sway of a rocking chair. His trot didn’t jounce Johnnie a bit. He cantered delightfully.
Johnnie Green was greatly pleased with his mount. “I wish I owned him,” he thought. “I wonder if Father would swap him for the Muley Cow.” The Muley Cow belonged to Johnnie Green. She would have felt terribly if she had known what was in his mind.
Mistah Mule soon proved himself a good jumper. He cleared the brook easily. And then he scrambled up the bank and began to race down the long gentle slope that stretched toward Cedar Swamp.
Now, Johnnie Green liked to ride at a gallop. Mistah Mule showed a burst of speed that pleased him. But in a few moments it seemed to Johnnie that Mistah Mule was traveling faster with every jump.
“He can’t be running away,” Johnnie muttered, as if trying to put out of his head any notion that Mistah Mule might be doing that very thing. And then Johnnie began to pull upon the reins. “Whoa!” he cried, not meaning that he wanted Mistah Mule to stop, but only that he wished him to gallop more slowly.
Well, Mistah Mule had promised theold horse Ebenezer that he would do exactly as Johnnie Green said. So now, when his rider cried, “Whoa!” he stiffened his legs and came down upon all fours instantly. He stopped short. Nobody could say that he hadn’t obeyed Johnnie Green.
But Johnnie Green himself did not stop so quickly. On he went. He shot along Mistah Mule’s neck, slipped over his head, in spite of a frantic clutch at Mistah Mule’s ears, and sailed sprawling through the air.
Some distance in front of Mistah Mule, Johnnie Green struck the ground. Though the grass was almost knee-high, Johnnie found his landing-place far from soft. And while he lay there, gasping for breath, Mistah Mule suddenly turned and trotted toward the farm buildings.
Johnnie struggled to his feet and ranafter him. He tried to call out to him to stop. But not a word could he utter.
There was a great flurry in the farmyard when Mistah Mule came home with his saddle empty. Later, in the barn, the old horse Ebenezer spoke to him very severely. But Mistah Mule declared that it wasn’t his fault at all that Johnnie Green had been thrown.
“That boy,” he told Ebenezer, “he done say, ‘Whoa!’ An’ I whoaed!”