melling distance, and which no mare (with a
driver like Jabe) could afford to pass without notice.

Jabe was ostensibly out on an "errant" for Miss Avilda Cummins; but, as
he had been in her service for six years, she had no expectations of his
accomplishing anything beyond getting to a place and getting back in the
same day, the distance covered being no factor at all in the matter.

But one needn't go to Miss Avilda Cummins for a description of Jabe
Slocum's peculiarities. They were all so written upon his face and
figure and speech that the wayfaring man, though a fool, could not err
in his judgment. He was a long, loose, knock-kneed, slack-twisted
person, and would have been "longer yit if he hedn't hed so much turned
up for feet,"--so Aunt Hitty Tarbox said. (Aunt Hitty went from house to
house in Edgewood and Pleasant River, making over boys' clothes; and as
her tongue flew as fast as her needle, her sharp speeches were always in
circulation in both villages.)

Mr. Slocum had sandy hair, high cheekbones, a pair of kindly light blue
eyes, and a most unique nose: I hardly know to what order of
architecture it belonged,--perhaps Old Colonial would describe it as
well as anything else. It was a wide, flat, well-ventilated, hospitable
edifice (so to speak), so peculiarly constructed and applied that
Samantha Ann Ripley (of whom more anon) declared that "the reason Jabe
Slocum ketched cold so easy was that, if he didn't hold his head jess
so, it kep' a-rainin' in!"

His mouth was simply an enormous slit in his face, and served all the
purposes for which a mouth is presumably intended, save, perhaps, the
trivial one of decoration. In short (a ludicrously inappropriate word
for the subject), it was a capital medium for exits and entrances, but
no ornament to his countenance. When Rhapsena Crabb, now deceased, was
first engaged to Jabez Slocum, Aunt Hitty Tarbox said it beat her "how
Rhapseny ever got over Jabe's mouth; though she could 'a' got intew it
easy 'nough, or raound it, if she took plenty o' time." But perhaps
Rhapsena appreciated a mouth (in a husband) that never was given to
"jawin'," and which uttered only kind words during her brief span of
married life. And there was precious little leisure for kissing at
Pleasant River!

As Jabe had passed the store, a few minutes before, one of the boys had
called out, facetiously, "Shet yer mouth when ye go by the deepot,
Laigs; the train's comin' in!" But he only sm