leading to the
barnyard.

I ran up this walk, and looked into the first building I came to. It was
the horse stable. A door stood open, and the morning sun was glancing
in. There were several horses there, some with their heads toward me,
and some with their tails. I saw that instead of being tied up, there
were gates outside their stalls, and they could stand in any way they
liked.

There was a man moving about at the other end of the stable, and long
before he saw me, I knew that it was Mr. Wood. What a nice, clean stable
he had! There was always a foul smell coming out of Jenkins's stable,
but here the air seemed as pure inside as outside. There was a number
of little gratings in the wall to let in the fresh air, and they were so
placed that drafts would not blow on the horses. Mr. Wood was going from
one horse to another, giving them hay, and talking to them in a cheerful
voice. At last he spied me, and cried out, "The top of the morning to
you, Joe! You are up early. Don't come too near the horses, good dog,"
as I walked in beside him; "they might think you are another Bruno, and
give you a sly bite or kick. I should have shot him long ago. 'Tis
hard to make a good dog suffer for a bad one, but that's the way of the
world. Well, old fellow, what do you think of my horse stable? Pretty
fair, isn't it?" And Mr. Wood went on talking to me as he fed and
groomed his horses, till I soon found out that his chief pride was in
them.

I like to have human beings talk to me. Mr. Morris often reads his
sermons to me, and Miss Laura tells me secrets that I don't think she
would tell to any one else.

I watched Mr. Wood carefully, while he groomed a huge, gray cart-horse,
that he called Dutchman. He took a brush in his right hand, and a
curry-comb in his left, and he curried and brushed every part of the
horse's skin, and afterward wiped him with a cloth. "A good grooming is
equal to two quarts of oats, Joe," he said to me.

Then he stooped down and examined the horse's hoofs. "Your shoes are
too heavy, Dutchman," he said; "but that pig-headed blacksmith thinks he
knows more about horses than I do. 'Don't cut the sole nor the frog,'
I say to him. 'Don't pare the hoof so much, and don't rasp it; and fit
your shoe to the foot, and not the foot to the shoe,' and he looks as if
he wanted to say, 'Mind your own business.' We'll not go to him again.
''Tis hard to teach an old dog new tricks.' I got you to work for me,
not to we