VI
SPEAKING OF HORNETS
Farmer Green had started for the gristmill, driving that ill-matched pair, rascally Mistah Mule and the staid old horse, Ebenezer. When they had swung into the road in front of the farmhouse, Mistah Mule played again that trick which had annoyed Ebenezer the day before. Laying his ears back, he sidled over toward Ebenezer and pressed his flank against the wagon-pole. He knew that the trick bothered Ebenezer. Had not Ebenezer ordered him, yesterday, to “move over”? He knew that it annoyed Farmer Green too. For Farmer Green had spoken to him and tried to guide him aside by pulling on a rein.
Just for a moment Mistah Mule leaned heavily against the wagon-pole. And then he sprang away as if he had touched a red-hot coal. He plunged wildly, switched his tail, and threatened to kick.
Farmer Green tightened the reins and called to him in a calm, firm voice, “Steady, boy! Whoa! Whoa!”
Mistah Mule soon stopped his struggling. “A whole swarm of hornets done stung me,” he said to Ebenezer. “Didn’t they sting you, ole hoss?”
“I felt nothing,” Ebenezer replied.
For a few minutes Mistah Mule stayed on his own side of the road, where he belonged. But as soon as his skin stopped tingling he edged over toward the wagon-pole once more.
The old horse Ebenezer chuckled.
“Mistah Mule will get stung again as soon as he touches the pole,” he said to himself. He wondered how many times Mistah Mule would press against the sharp tacks which Farmer Green had driven through a piece of leather and then nailed to the wagon-pole, with their ends pointing at Mistah Mule. It was no wonder that when they pricked him, Mistah Mule thought they were hornets.
Old Ebenezer watched his team-mate narrowly. Soon he both saw and felt Mistah Mule lurch against the pole. No sooner had the black rascal touched it than he sprang away again with a grunt.
“Hornets agin!” he exclaimed. “Sakes alive! I declare I never see such a powerful lot as they is hereabouts.”
“Maybe if you kept away from the wagon-pole they wouldn’t touch you,” Ebenezer suggested.
“Shucks! What’s the pole got to do with my bein’ stung by these here hornets?” And Mistah Mule “crowded the pole” again—to use Farmer Green’s words.
“Ole hoss, you’re right!” he snorted as he leaped aside. “I declare these is the queerest hornets I ever did see.”