Page:Aunt Jo's Scrap-Bag, Volume 3.djvu/102

 great value of the beasts they abuse and neglect. Neighbor Stone is fussing over his old Whitey as if he was a child, and yet I've seen that poor brute unmercifully beaten, and kept half starved. I told Stone that if he lost him it would be because kind treatment came too late; and Stone never got mad, but went and poured vinegar over a hot brick under Whitey's nose till he 'most sneezed his head off. Stone has got a lesson this time, and so have some other folks."

As the farmer spoke, he glanced at the boys, who remorsefully recalled the wrongs poor Major had suffered at their hands, not from cruelty, but thoughtlessness, and both resolved to treat him like a friend for evermore.

"Well," said grandma, looking with tender pride at the ruddy faces on either side of her, "I'm thankful to say that I've never missed a Sunday for twenty year, and I've been in all sorts of weather, and in all sorts of ways, even on an ox sled one time when the drifts were deep, but I never went better than to-day; so in this dish of tea I'm going to drink this toast: 'Easy roads, light loads, and kind drivers to grandma's team.