Manchurian Books

"I saw you do it," she said, expecting a denial.
"Yes, I did it," he answered. "I wasn't going to say I didn't."
"Why did you?" she repeated.
"I can't beat a dumb brute when it's doing its best," he said, looking
away from her, shy and ashamed.
"But the wagon would have gone down to the bottom of the hill. It was
going."
"What would that have mattered? We could have taken some of the things
out and carried them up afterwards. When a horse does his best for
you, what's the sense of beating the life out of him when the load's
too heavy. I can't do that."
"Was that why you threw it down?"
He nodded.
"You'd rather have carried the things up?"
"Yes."
She laid the sticks one on the other without replying and he said with
a touch of pleading in his tone:
"You understand that, don't you?"
She answered quickly:
"Oh, of course, perfectly."
But nevertheless she did not quite. Daddy John's action was the one
she really did understand, and she even understood why Leff swore so
violently.


CHAPTER VIII
It was Sunday again and they lay encamped near the Little Blue.


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