IV.

We had the mails to change at the post-offices, and a seemingly inexhaustible store, intrusted to the care and courtesy of the driver, and surrounding him like a rampart,—­of newspapers, bundles, cans, pillow-cases full of dried apples, and often letters.

At the red house near the mill below Surrey, a sweet-looking girl ran out, as we passed, holding her hand forward for a letter, which our driver pretended to drop half a dozen times, on purpose to tantalize her.  It was pretty to see her blushing, sparkling face, as the blood danced to her brow with hope, and back with the baffled expectancy to her heart.

“Neouw, Sil, be still! give to me, yeouw!”

If it hadn’t been Yankee, it was soft and melodious enough for an Italian peasant.  As picturesque, too, was her short, blue woollen petticoat, and white short-gown, that “half hid and half revealed” the unconstrained grace of healthy mountain-nature; and more modest the happy look with which she received the letter at last, and flew with it like a bird back to the red nest.

“A love-letter, I suppose,” said I, answering the twinkle of the driver’s good-natured eye.

“Wal, I expect ’s likely.  They’ve been sparking now over a year.  And it’s a pity, too, such a real clever girl as that is!  She a’n’t so dreadful bright, but she’s real clever, and ough’ to hev a better chance ’n Jim Ruggles.”

“A bad match for her?”

“Wal, Jim’s a good feller enough, but he drinks.  I don’t mean to say nothin’ agin moderate drinkin’.  I drink myself moderately.  But Jim’s a real sponge.  He’d drink all day hard and never show it, without it is bein’ cross, maybe, and paler ’n common.  Now I say,—­and I a’n’t no ‘reformed inebriate,’ nor Father Matthew sort,—­but I do say, and will hold to it, such a man at twenty-one makes a poor beginnin’.  If he lives, he’ll be a poor shote, and no mistake.  I’m sorry for the gal.”

“Somebody ought to tell her.  Why not you?”

“Wal, what’s the good on ’t?  She wouldn’t hear a word.  When a woman’s once sot her mind, don’t do no good to talk.  For that matter, talkin’ never did do much, I’m thinkin’,—­exceptin’ preachin’.  We’re bound to hear that, Parson,” he added, laughing, and with a nod which might seem respectful.

In three hours we had driven thirteen miles.  Pretty good progress this of a warm day, and with a full complement of passengers.  We had watched the sun rise over Walpole hills, and the specks in the distance where the early farmers were ploughing and sowing.  The breaking day, the bursting spring, and all the outward melodies with which the welcoming day rings as we toil on, are so many incentives to appetite, and we are all sharp for the ready breakfast, at six o’clock.

Then, as I am talking of the past, and not of the present, there was time enough:  time enough for the comfortable discussion of breakfast, for the changing of raiment among the babies, for chatting in the bar-room, for the interchange of news among the men, and even for glasses of milk-punch.  Tell it not in modern Gath that even the Dominie spiced his half-mug of flip with an anecdote, and that every man and woman took cider as well as coffee.