I
_Initiation of the Two-Legged Partners_
The thing was incredible. It was intolerable—just cause for mutiny. Talk
about injustice, arrogant denial of the equal rights of man and beast!
Well, here was a spectacle calculated to make the heavens weep. Yet
never had a June sky revealed a deeper shade of blue for fleecy clouds
to sail upon. The wind that should have risen in a shriek of indignation
blew softly around the corner of the barn, and was laden with fragrance
from all the flowers that bloom. In the meadow just beyond the stone
fence, the tall grass waved gently, whispering contentment to the brook
that gurgled with happiness. Birds sang, grasshoppers chirped—
Clarence could stand it no longer. With his neck stretched far out of
his stall window, the colt lifted up his voice and whinnied
remonstrance.
“O Amanda! Why are we still prisoners, and the sun half-way up the roof
of heaven? It is an outrage, Amanda. Come quickly and let us out.”
Reginald—the round fat one with the tight kink in his tail—stood on his
hind-legs inside the barnyard fence under the colt’s nose, and voiced
his personal grievance in short sharp squeaks.
“Let me out, let me out, let me out! My trough is empty. My flattened
belly cleaves to my backbone.”
On either side of him were Mrs. Cowslip and Gustavius, with their heads
over the fence and their noses in the air.
“Amanda, O Amanda!” bawled the bull-calf, while his mother—she of the
liquid eyes and the crumpled horn—lowed her gentle reminder:—
“Good, kind Amanda, this yard is barren; in the pasture the long grass
is luscious. Amanda, O Amanda!”
And William, the big-horned and bearded one, butted foolishly at the
hinges of the barnyard gate.
The others gave no heed to William’s puerile devices. He was only an
addle-pated goat anyway, devoid of reasoning power and puffed up with
vanity. They put their noses together and considered the matter, the
bull-calf wrinkling his yellow muzzle at Clarence’s ear and dropping now
and then a superfluous comment. Ordinarily the colt, having an exalted
sense of his own superiority, would have indulged in no such familiarity
with a placid old cow and her lubberly calf; but it was plain that the
present occasion was one demanding the sinking of the individual in the
organization. So Clarence patiently reviewed the situation, inviting
their suggestions.
To go back to the events of the early morning. Why had that two-legged
tyrant, who always responded so promptly to the vulgar name of Gabe
whenever Amanda hailed him from the kitchen door, harnessed the mare and
driven off, leaving them deprived of their customary liberty, and
without a word of explanation? The act was contrary to the Professor’s
most sacred principle of equity for all living creatures, whether having
four legs or only two.
“And yet just now you led us in our supplications to Amanda,” observed
Mrs. Cowslip. “Why did you not remind the Professor of our—”
“Ah!” broke in Gustavius, “you can trust the Professor to understand the
needs of a bull-calf.”
“You don’t have to ask the Professor twice when you want your back
scratched,” grunted Reginald, his tail kinking tighter than ever with
delicious memories.
“The Professor has a large, round, and most inviting stomach,” commented
William. “Never before have I spared such a stomach. Yet never have I
felt the slightest inclination to butt the Professor.”
Mrs. Cowslip turned her mild eyes inquiringly on the colt. “I suggest,”
she said, “that we remind the Professor—”
“My gracious!” interrupted Clarence with impatience. “Can’t you fellows
remember anything over-night? The Professor drove off behind my mother
yesterday morning. There was a box beside him in the wagon. He wore his
high hat. Mother came home without him. There’s nobody left in the house
but Amanda and that two-legged Gabe.”