Bannon saw
it, and grinned at their unbelief.

When the blacks were in the traces, Bannon took the reins. One of the
men offered him a long wicked-looking whip, but he spurned it.

"No," he said, "if the blacks won't pull for love, they won't for a
beating."

So then he spoke to them. Willing hands started the wheels. The
gallant little blacks, looking like a pair of ponies before the huge
van, seemed to lie flat on their bellies as they strained forward,
digging their sharp little hoofs into the hillside. The van gave an
inch--two! A foot! Then urged by their master's voice, and for very
pride of home and race and breed, the gallant blacks pulled for dear
life, and in a quarter of an hour the van was at our door, and they
were switching their tails and stamping their hoofs and shaking their
intelligent heads in the pride of victory.

As for Bannon, he stroked and praised them in an ecstasy of
self-vindication, and was refusing the van man's offer to buy them at
"a hundred dollars apiece more than they cost."

Those horses pulled our three vans up our hill, if you will believe it,
and seemed rather to enjoy the grind they had on the other horses, so
that, in a fever of appreciation, I had to go and feed apples and sugar
to all ten of them, and to remind the blacks that the New York horses
had been pulling those vans since midnight, all of which I begged them
to take into consideration, while not in the least depreciating their
own glorious achievement.

The initiated need not be told how, when hardwood floors are being
laid, furniture is moved from room to room to accommodate the
carpenters, and the uninitiated will not be interested at the recital.
It must be experienced to be appreciated.

We lived through it. We learned not to object when the ice-box was set
up in the hall so near the grate that the drip-pan had to be emptied
every hour, and the iceman had to come twice a day. We learned to step
over rolls of rugs and to bark our shins on rocking-chairs and to trip
over hidden objects with only a pleasant smile.

We screened one porch entirely, and furnished it as a study for Aubrey.
We had now papered and painted the house from top to bottom. We had
put in gas, telephone, and electric light, and when we could no longer
think of any further way to spend money, we turned our attention to the
garden.

I longed for old Amos, my uncle's gardener and coachman in Louisville.
His experience would be in