“If,” began Lippity-Libby, “you go on gettin’ letters at the rate o’ one a day, there’s only two ways to it.  Either you’ll practise yourself not to keep the King’s postman waitin’, or you’ll make it up afterwards in the shape of a Christmas-box. . . .  I ought in fairness to tell you,” Lippity-Libby added, “that there is a third way—­ though I hate the sight of it—­and that’s a letter-box with a slit in the door.  Parson Steele has one.  When I asked en why, he laughed an’ talked foolish, an’ said he’d put it up in self-defence.  Now, what sort o’ defence can a letter-box be to any man’s house?  And that was six months afore the War, too!”

“Another letter for me?” Nicky-Nan hobbled forward, blinking against the sunlight.

“’Ho-Haitch-Hem-Hess’—­that means ‘On His Majesty Service’; post-mark, Troy. . . .  Hullo!—­anything wrong wi’ the house?”

“Eh?”

“Plasterin’ job?”

Nicky-Nan understood.  “What’s that to you?” he asked curtly.

“I don’ know how it should happen,” mused Lippity-Libby after a pause of dejection; “but the gettin’ of letters seems to turn folks suspicious-like all of a sudden.  You’d be surprised the number that puts me the very question you’ve just asked.  An’ they tell me that ’tis with money the same as with letters.  I read a tract one time, about a man that found hisself rich of a sudden, and instead o’ callin’ his naybours together an’ sayin’ ‘Rejoice with me,’ what d’ye think he went an’ did?”

“Look here,” said Nicky-Nan, eyeing the postman firmly.  “If you’re hidin’ something behind this clack, I’ll trouble you to out with it.”

“If you don’t want the story, you shan’t have it,” said Lippity-Libby, aggrieved. “’Tis your loss, too; for it was full of instruction, an’ had a moral at the end in different letterin’. . . .  You’re upset this mornin’, that’s what you are:  been up too early an’ workin’ too hard at that plasterin’ job, whatever it is.”  The little man limped back into the roadway and cricked his head back for a gaze up at the chimneys.  “Nothing wrong on this side, seemin’ly. . . .  Nor, nor there wasn’t any breeze o’ wind in the night, not to wake me. . . .  Anyways, you’re a wonderful forgivin’ man, Nicholas Nanjivell.”

“Why so?”

“Why, to be up betimes an’ workin’ yourself cross, plasterin’ at th’ old house, out o’ which—­if report’s true—­you’ll be turned within a week.”

“Don’t you listen to reports; no, nor spread ’em.  Here, hand me over my letter. . . .  ‘Turn me out,’ will they?  Go an’ tell ’em they can’t do it—­not if they was to bring all the king’s horses and all the king’s men!”

“And they be all gone to France.  There! there!  As I said to myself only last night as I got into bed—­’What a thing is War!’ I said, ‘an’ o’ what furious an’ rummy things consistin’—­marches to an’ fro, short commons, shootin’s of cannon, rapes, an’ other bloodthirsty goin’s-on; an’ here we be in the midst thereof!  That’s calkilated to make a man think.’ . . .  But I must say,” said Lippity-Libby, eyeing the sky aloft, “the glass is goin’ up stiddy, an’ that’s always a comfort.”