XXVBRIGHT AND BROAD
Mistah Mulewas in the back pasture. The only other farm folk there were Farmer Green’s oxen, Bright and Broad. They were a slow-going pair. They always took plenty of time for anything they did. They walked slowly, they lay down and got up slowly, they ate slowly, they thought slowly, they talked slowly. And when they spoke, usually they both said the same thing at the same time, in a sort of deep-toned chant.
Mistah Mule was not pleased with his companions. He thought that Bright and Broad were dull company. However, hehad to talk with somebody, for he dearly loved to wrangle. So he stayed near Bright and Broad a good deal of the time.
Now, Bright and Broad were far from ashamed of being slow. On the contrary, they prided themselves on their slowness.
“‘Slow but sure’ is our motto,” they remarked to Mistah Mule, speaking together and wagging their great heads in exactly the same, slow fashion.
“Huh!” grunted Mistah Mule, who—when he wasn’t ill—was always ready to disagree with anybody, about anything. “You-all ain’t so slow as what I is.”
Bright and Broad looked at each other and shook their heads. Then they burst into a rumbling laugh: “Ho! Ho! Ho!”
“What for you scoffin’ at me?” Mistah Mule demanded.
“We’ve seen you run,” they told him. “You’re fast.”
“Prehaps! Prehaps!” Mistah Mule admitted. “But I kin be so slow, when Iwantsto be, that I doesn’t move a-tall.”
“Ho! Ho! Ho!” Again the great sides of Bright and Broad heaved with laughter. “We know you’re sometimes balky. But it’s easy to balk. A rock or a tree can do that. The question is,how slowly can you walk and not come to a halt?”
“Slower’n what you-all kin!” Mistah Mule retorted.
“Ho! Ho! Ho! Pardon us! But we don’t think so,” Bright and Broad replied. Bright winked very slowly at Broad; and Broad winked very slowly at Bright.
Now, Mistah Mule was all for settling the dispute by talk. But Bright and Broad told him that all the talking in the world couldn’t convince them that they were wrong.
“There’s just one way to end the argument,” they told Mistah Mule. “And that is to have a slow race.”
Although Mistah Mule didn’t know what they meant, he exclaimed that he was ready for anything.
“I doesn’t keer,” he said, “what kind o’ race it is. I knows I kin win it.”