e intelligence respecting my
present place of abode, I asked to which post-town she was to send or
carry the letter, a stolid 'ANAN' showed me she was either ignorant of
the nature of a post-office, or that, for the present, she chose to seem
so.--'Simpleton!' I said, with some sharpness.

'O Lord, sir!' answered the girl, turning pale, which they always do
when I show any sparks of anger, 'Don't put yourself in a passion--I'll
put the letter in the post.

'What! and not know the name of the post-town?' said I, out of patience.
'How on earth do you propose to manage that?'

'La you there, good master. What need you frighten a poor girl that is
no schollard, bating what she learned at the Charity School of Saint
Bees?'

'Is Saint Bees far from this place, Dorcas? Do you send your letters
there?' said I, in a manner as insinuating, and yet careless, as I could
assume.

'Saint Bees! La, who but a madman--begging your honour's pardon--it's a
matter of twenty years since fader lived at Saint Bees, which is twenty,
or forty, or I dunna know not how many miles from this part, to the
West, on the coast side; and I would not have left Saint Bees, but that
fader'--

'Oh, the devil take your father!' replied I.

To which she answered, 'Nay, but thof your honour be a little
how-come-so, you shouldn't damn folk's faders; and I won't stand to it,
for one.'

'Oh, I beg you a thousand pardons--I wish your father no ill in the
world--he was a very honest man in his way.'

'WAS an honest man!' she exclaimed; for the Cumbrians are, it would
seem, like their neighbours the Scotch, ticklish on the point of
ancestry,--'He IS a very honest man as ever led nag with halter on head
to Staneshaw Bank Fair. Honest! He is a horse-couper.'

'Right, right,' I replied; 'I know it--I have heard of your father-as
honest as any horse-couper of them all. Why, Dorcas, I mean to buy a
horse of him.'

'Ah, your honour,' sighed Dorcas, 'he is the man to serve your honour
well--if ever you should get round again--or thof you were a bit off the
hooks, he would no more cheat you than'--

'Well, well, we will deal, my girl, you may depend on't. But tell me
now, were I to give you a letter, what would you do to get it forward?'

'Why, put it into Squire's own bag that hangs in hall,' answered poor
Dorcas. 'What else could I do? He sends it to Brampton, or to Carloisle,
or where it pleases him, once a week, and that gate.'

'Ah!' said I; 'and I s