then run on
smooth ground some time, before it puts another snag in your way; and
it made no exception in Que's favor. His drab clothes kept clean a
long time, in spite of the leather bag, and washed well when they were
not clean. The Gingoo postmaster took a fancy to him, and the Point
post master refrained from tormenting him. The mails were not
unbearably heavy nor the month of July remarkably hot after the first.
Que had a good appetite for his supper, and plenty of supper to show
it on, and slept long and heavily every night and a part of every
morning, and thought that the world was a pretty good kind of place,
after all. But that was only because he hadn't come to the second snag
yet.

One day, in the first end of August, a wind sprang up. It wasn't a
very uncommonly high wind, only no one was expecting it, because the
days had been muggy, and that made every one say, "Why, what a high
wind there is to-day!"

You and I can't tell why the wind should have gone on rising through
the forenoon; but we can guess, which will answer our purpose just as
well; for you know it is but little more than that that your father
and his friends, and father's father and his friends, do, when they
meet together and "express opinions."

_I_ guess that the wind rose higher through the forenoon because, as
soon as it began to play about in the morning, it caught the whisper
of people's surprise, and thought it would take the hint, and blow
them up a little.

"What a dickens of a wind!" said Que, when he stood, or tried to
stand, on top of the hill with his bag.

Que had learned all the easy ways of carrying that bag long ago; of
strapping it in a little roll over his shoulders when it wasn't very
full; of carrying it on his head when it had enough inside to balance
just right, and of strapping it round his body when it had nothing in
it. But, as the days had been all stormless alike, he had been obliged
to adapt himself only to the conditions of the bag, and not at all to
the state of the weather.

As the masculine mind is capable of taking in only one idea at a time,
as soon as Que put his mind to the state of the weather, it drew
itself away from the manner of carrying the bag.

"Wish I had something between me and the wind," sighed he.

Just then the wind blew off his hat, to teach him the polite order of
mentioning two persons, of whom himself was one.

Que followed after it as fast as he could, and let the bag drop b