ret qualm that she shook her head disapprovingly when she saw him.

Steve stood and gazed at her for so long that the man in charge there
finally asked him what he was waiting for. Steve replied that she
looked so happy it seemed a pity to disturb her. The man said that he
didn't regard her as particularly happy, inasmuch as she had all but
kicked out one side of the car. Upon hearing which, Steve hastened to
assure him that that was merely a playful way of hers when her
spirits were at the highest, but the man said that her spirits were
several feet too high for him, and he insisted upon lowering them to
_terra firma_. He was so firm and so disagreeable about this that
Steve was obliged to advance and join him in the difficult
undertaking.

It might seem reasonable to expect that as long as Sarah Maria had
testified vigorously to her disapproval of the freight car she would
be glad to issue from it, and no doubt that would have been the case
had Steve and the station master urged her to remain. The moment,
however, that she saw with her eagle eye that they were making
preparations for her ejectment, her mind was made up, and she spread
her four feet in a manner suggestive of rocks that refuse to fly.

The unhappy men now united their efforts at pulling, but her roots had
evidently gone down to China without stopping; next they endeavored to
pry her up, but she was manifestly stuck by some glue of unparalleled
strength.

By this time the honest sweat was dripping from the brows of both men;
Sarah Maria alone was calm. Various devices were used to dislodge her,
and at the end of an hour she had moved a trifle further than a
glacier does in a similar length of time, and was fully as cold and
calm as this natural phenomenon. As she was quite near the opening of
the car when she took her stand, in a physical as well as in a moral
sense, even the very slight advantage gained by her enemies sufficed
to put her in position to make her final exit when, like Sairy Gamp,
she was "so dispodged."

"Now," said the station master, who by this time had not so much as a
dry thread on him, "if you'll pull I'll twist her tail so's to divert
her attention, and I guess we'll make a go of it."

Steve looked into the threatening eye of Sarah Maria, and foreseeing
his doom if he stood in front of her, told the station master that as
Sarah, for some reason, seemed disinclined to love him, she might be
unwilling to go in his direction, a