all I c'n do.'

"Wall, what think you, but major laughs, an' wouldn't tetch ary cent of
it, but took 'is letters, an' says he, 'They've ackired a peculiar
richness,' says he, 'an' I'd orter be up there mail-openin' an' not
make a lady so much trouble,' says he. That's the kind o' poppolation
's I, for one, sh'd like to fill up the Basin with!" said Lunette,
flourishing her rolling-pin.

A murmur of approval ran through the room.

Blushing, embarrassed, but swollen with pride, I picked up another
sand-peep to pluck.

At that instant "Snipe," the household and post-office dog, ran across
the floor with high-careering head, holding a huge envelope in his
teeth.

"Stop him! stop him!" cries arose: "it's Elvine's registered letter, 't
's goin' to Boston for a tea-set!"

A rush followed Snipe into the bedroom, the door of which stood open;
the evil dog ran under the bed and into the farthest corner, where,
with his jaws formed into the semblance of a menace and a mocking
laugh, he assumed an attack upon that potential tea-set.

Lunette rushed in after him. Now the bed, in default, for some unknown
though doubtless wise Basin reasons, of other stanchions, was set up on
four chairs, one at each corner, and as Lunette rushed under it, she
displaced the outermost chair; whereat the bed at that source collapsed
with a crash, imprisoning both her and the dog.

"I've been a-threatenin' to have that bed fixed," said Tyson, with
politic zeal, as his wife and dog were delivered.

Lunette with voiceless indignation seized one of a buttress of
birch-switches behind the door, and began applying it to the
consciously ruined Snipe, at the arising of whose howls the
post-carrier drove up, and, entering, threw the bag, in loud token of
his arrival, upon the floor.

Snipe, of all places, ran and entrenched himself behind my feeble legs!
Whereat, "Don't whip him any more," I pleaded, being already flattered,
in one way and another, as high as mortal could sustain.

Lunette turned unwillingly to the post. The post-driver stood about
seven feet in his boots, with a handsome face, all mud-bespattered.
Many voices beset him familiarly.

"Say, Will, did ye bring down my molasses?" "Say, Will, did ye match
that ribbin f'r me?" "Say, Will," etc., etc.

"You bet I did, every time!" he answered jovially, showing his white
teeth. Interest in the post was comparatively moribund; a general
parcel-distributing and hand-shaking follow