suddenly looked up and jerked the mule's head so that he, too, stopped
and regarded me. They looked like wary jungle things that had been
belled from the thicket, but for just a second; then Sam threw his line
around the plow-handle, thus hitching the mule to himself, and came
running across the field to me, as lightly as the blue jay skimmed from
over my head into the branches of another cedar in answer to the same
twit I had heard the day I first came out into the habitation of the
birds. The pleasure of seeing Sam run to me was almost as keen as the
pain of seeing him run away from me, but it was mitigated by my alarm
over the poor sore foot.

"Gracious sakes, Betty! is that a mud-scow you came out in?" he asked,
as he started to take my hand in his, which was brown with mud, and
ended by rubbing his cheek in my palm. That seemed to be about the only
member he had kept clean enough for the greeting.

"Aren't you hurting your heel plowing like that, Sam?" I asked,
anxiously.

"Heel--what heel? Oh, that's all right. I haven't heard from it since
you tucked it away in the cream Tuesday night. I have cold-bucketed
myself every morning, standing on one leg with it up on the wash-bench
so as not to wake it up. Come on up to the house. I'll walk, because I'm
too muddy to get in with you in your sedan-chair."

"No; you go back to the plowing and I'll go and unload and begin my
work," I answered, with positive heroism. I wanted to get out and go and
be introduced to the mule, but I came to Sam to be not a clinging vine,
but a competent garden-hoe to him.