They all laughed at Halse's joke, not unkindly, yet I can hardly describe how much it wounded my vanity and how incensed I felt with the joker. Slowly the oxen moved away out of hearing. Even my instructor, Addison, lagged a little behind to indulge in a broad smile. Glancing backward, I detected his amused expression and was almost minded to fling away the goad-stick; and I did not feel much reassured when he remarked that I did very well for a beginner. "Don't mind what Halse says," Addison continued. "He cannot drive a cart through a gateway himself without tearing both gate-posts down." There was solace in that statement. The oxen were very steady and well broken; and I contrived to drive the cart across the field and down through the pasture to the brook without much difficulty, although I noticed several times that old Bright rolled the white of his eye up to me, in a peculiar manner, as if something in my movements was puzzling to the bovine mind. I asked Addison whether he did not think that the oxen had very handsome eyes, for they seemed to me exceedingly soft and lustrous. "Yes," replied he, "all cattle have just such large, fine eyes." But he appeared to be somewhat amused at the way I spoke of it; for the thought had struck me that it was strange and not quite clear why cattle should have eyes so much finer and more lustrous than human beings. I ventured to ask Ad's opinion on that subject, as we were taking out the pipe beside the brook. "Well," he replied, still laughing, "perhaps it is because their lives are simpler and they don't have so much evil in them as human beings do. But I recommend you to ask Elder Witham about that the next time he spends the night here." We now took the pipe out of the cart and chained up the oxen to the nigh cart-wheel. Addison then explained to me his method of warming the water for washing the sheep. From the dam which formed the Little Sea, there was a considerable descent in the brook for some distance; and Addison's device consisted in laying the pipe from the pond above the dam, so as to carry water to two half-hogshead tubs, ninety or a hundred feet farther down the bed of the brook. The pipe rested on heaps of stones placed eight or ten feet apart and was thus elevated a foot and a half from the ground; and directly beneath it a fire was kindled and kept burning briskly all the time the washing was going on. The pipe was thus exposed to the fire along its whole length; and it was found that the water running through it was rendered very comfortably warm where it ran out into the first tub. A short spout connected the first tub with the other, set a little lower down, so that the warm water ran on into that one. The sheep were first put into the lower tub and there soaped and scrubbed, then taken to the upper tub and rinsed thoroughly. "Now get out the wrench and pipe-tongs," said Addison. "The first thing to do is to screw the pipe together."