nished dream, but I
began to fear that Sunday dinner was also doomed. "Do you want me to
help?" I asked.

"Oh, no," said Jonathan. "I'll put her in the barn till I can get a
rope, and then I'll lead her."

However, I did help get her into the barn. Then while he went for his
rope I unharnessed. When he came back, he had changed into a flannel
shirt and working trousers. He entered the barn and in a few moments
emerged, pulling hard on the rope. Nothing happened.

"Go around the other way," he called, "and take a stick, and poke that
cow till she starts."

I went in at the back door, slid between the stanchions into the cow
stall, and gingerly poked at the animal's hind quarters and said, "Hi!"
until at last, with a hunching of hips and tossing of head, she bounded
out into the sunny barnyard.

"She'll be all right now," said Jonathan.

I watched them doubtfully, but they got through the bars and as far as
the road without incident. At the road she suddenly balked. She twisted
her horns and set her front legs. I hurried down from my post of
observation in the carriage-house door, and said "Hi!" again.

"That's no good," panted Jonathan; "get your stick again. Now, when I
pull, you hit her behind, and she'll come. I guess she hasn't been
taught to lead yet."

"If she has, she has apparently forgotten," I replied. "Now, then, you
pull!"

The creature moved on grudgingly, with curious and unlovely sidewise
lunges and much brandishing of horns, where the rope was tied.

"Hit her again, now!" said Jonathan. "Oh, _hit_ her! Hit her harder! She
doesn't feel that. _Hit_ her! There! Now, she's coming."

Truly, she did come. But I am ashamed to think how I used that stick. As
we progressed up the road, over the hill, and down to the lower
pasture, there kept repeating themselves over and over in my head the
lines:--

"The sergeant pushed and the corporal pulled,
And the three they wagged along."

But I did not quote these to Jonathan until afterwards. There was
something else, too, that I did not quote until afterwards. This was the
remark of a sailor uncle of mine: "A man never tackled a job yet that he
didn't have to have a woman to hold on to the slack."

* * * * *

So much for Sunday business. But it should not for a moment be supposed
that Sunday is full of these incidents. It is only for a little while in
the morning. After the church hour, about eleven o'clock or earlie