“I really said it. At least, I don’t remember conversations the way you do, but I didn’t feel a bit like thanking anybody, and I don’t believe I did.”
“Well, I wish I’d heard you. One misses a good deal—”
“You can see the stable to-morrow. That’ll keep. They must have had a time of it! The walls are marked and splintered as high as I can reach. And I don’t believe Kit’ll cringe when Griz passes her any more.”
“Of course you remember Hiram _said_ two mares didn’t usually get on very well, and even when they’re chosen by a good judge of horses—”
After that the two did get along peaceably enough, and Jonathan assured me that all horses had these little affairs. One day we drove over to the main street of the village on an errand.
“Better hitch her, perhaps,” said Jonathan, getting out the rope. He snapped it into her bit-ring, then threw the other end around a post and started to make a half-hitch. But as he drew up the rope it was suddenly jerked out of his hand. He looked up and saw Griselda’s patient head waving high above him on the end of an erect and rebellious neck, the hitch-rope waggling in loops and spirals in the air, and the whole outfit backing away from him with speed and decision. He was so astonished that he did nothing, and in a moment Griz had stopped backing and stood still, her head sagging gently, the rope dangling.
“Well—I’ll—be—” I didn’t try to remember just what Jonathan said he would be, because it doesn’t really matter. We both stared at Griz as if we had never seen her before. Griz looked at nothing in particular, she blinked long lashes over drowsy, dark eyes, and sagged one hip.
“She’s trying to make believe she didn’t do it—but she did,” I said.
“Something must have startled her,” said Jonathan, peering up and down the deserted street. Two roosters were crowing antiphonally in near-by yards, and a dog was barking somewhere far off.
“No, apparently not,” I said, smiling to myself; and I added hastily, as I saw Jonathan go forward to her head, “_Don’t_ try it again, please! I’ll stay by her while you go in. _Please!_” For I had detected on Jonathan’s face a look that I very well knew. It was the same expression he had worn that Sunday he led the calf to pasture. He made no answer, but stood examining the hitch-rope.