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Old Caravan Days by Mary Hartwell Catherwood
page 72 of 193 (37%)
dear little baby whose mother would not put it into anything else.

At New Carlisle, a sleepy little village where the dogfennel was
wonderfully advanced for June, Zene took the gray from the wagon and
hitched him to the carriage, substituting Old Hickory. The gray's
shoulder was rubbed by his collar, and Zene reasoned that the lighter
weight of the carriage would give him a better chance of healing his
bruise. Thus paired the horses looked comical. Hickory and Henry
evidently considered the change a disgrace to them. But they made the
best of it and uttered no protest, except keeping as wide a space as
possible between themselves and their new mates. But the gray and
white, old yoke fellows at the plough, who knew nothing of the
dignity of carriage drawing, and cared less, who had rubbed noses and
shared feed-boxes ever since they were colts, both lifted up their
voices in mournful whinneys and refused comfort and correction. The
white turned his head back over his shoulder and would have halted
anywhere until his mate came up; while the gray strained forward,
shaking his head, and neighing as if his throat were full of tears
every time a tree or a turn in the road hid the wagon.

The caravan moving to this irregular and doleful music, passed
through another little town which Zene said was named Boston, late on
a rainy afternoon. Here they crossed the Miami River in a bridge
through the cracks of which Robert Day and Corinne looked at the full
but not very wide stream. It flowed beneath them in comparative
silence. The rain pricked the water's surface into innumerable
puckers.

"Little boys dancing up," said aunt Corinne, in time-honored phrase.

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