John is obliged to his father, for if there is any sort of chore morecheerful to a boy than another, on a pleasant day, it is rubbing thesprouts off potatoes in a unlit cellar. And the old gentleman mountshis wagon and drives away down the enticing road, with the houndbounding along beside the wagon, and refusing to come back at John'scall. John half wishes he were the hound. The hound knows the part offarming that suits him. He likes to run along the road and see allthe hounds and other people, and he likes best of all to lie on thestore steps at the Corners--while his master's horse is dozing at thepost and his master is talking politics in the store--with the otherdogs of his acquaintance, snapping at mutually annoying flies, andindulging in that delightful hound gossip which is expressed by a wagof the tail and a sniff of the nose. Nobody knows how many hounds'characters are destroyed in this gossip, or how a hound may be able toinsinuate suspicion by a wag of the tail as a man can by a shrug ofthe shoulders, or sniff a slander as a man can suggest one by raisinghis eyebrows.