If there had been an artist eye to see they would have been well worth its while--Seffy and the mare so affectionately disparaged. And, after all, I am not sure that the speaker himself had not an artist's eye. For a spring pasture, or a fallow upland, or a drove of goodly cows deep in his clover, I know he had. (Perhaps you, too, have?) And this was his best mare and his only son. The big bay, clad in broad-banded harness, soft with oil and glittering with brasses, was shambling indolently down the hill, resisting her own momentum by the diagonal motion the old man had likened to a dog's sidewise trot. The looped trace-chains were jingling a merry dithyramb, her head was nodding, her tail swaying, and Seffy, propped by his elbow on her broad back, one leg swung between the hames, the other keeping time on her ribs, was singing: "'I want to be an angel And with the angels stand, A crown upon my forehead A harp within my hand--'" His adoring father chuckled. "I wonder what for kind of anchel he'd make, anyhow? And Betz--they'll have to go together. Say, I wonder if it _is_ horse-anchels?" No one knew; no one offered a suggestion. "Well, it ought to be. Say--he ken perform circus wiss ol' Betz!" They expressed their polite surprise at this for perhaps the hundredth time. "Yas--they have a kind of circus-ring in the barnyard. He stands on one foot, then on another, and on his hands wiss his feet kicking, and then he says words--like hokey-pokey--and Betz she kicks up behind and throws him off in the dung and we all laugh--happy efer after--Betz most of all!" After the applause he said: "I guess I'd better wake 'em up! What you sink?" They one and all thought he had. They knew he would do it, no matter what they thought. His method, as usual, was his own. He stepped to the adjoining field, and, selecting a clod with the steely polish of the plowshare upon it, threw it at the mare. It struck her on the flank. She gathered her feet under her in sudden alarm, then slowly relaxed, looked slyly for the old man, found him, and understanding, suddenly wheeled and ambled off home, leaving Seffy prone on the ground as her part of the joke. The old man brought Seffy in triumph to the store-porch. "Chust stopped you afore you got to be a anchel!" he was saying. "We couldn't bear to sink about you being a anchel--an' wiss the anchels stand--a harp upon your forehead, a crown within your hand, I expect--when it's corn-planting time." Seffy grinned cheerfully, brushed off the dust and contemplated his father's watch--held accusingly against him. Old Baumgartner went on gaily.