ld not do
it again; after Araminta had given him a pink peppermint--after all this,
and Sunny Boy was on his way to the barn with Jimmie to watch the
milking, do you know, that queer little feeling had entirely
disappeared!

CHAPTER VIII

A LETTER FROM DADDY

"My land of Goshen!"

Sunny Boy sat on the fence post waiting for the postman. He was great
friends now with the postman who came to the farm, almost as great
friends as with the cheerful, gray-uniformed letter-carrier in the city,
the one who brought letters to the house with the shining numbers that
Harriet faithfully polished.

This postman in the country did not wear a uniform, and he came in a
little red automobile that one could hear chug-chugging half a mile away.
He did not whistle either, as the city postman did, but he put the
letters and parcels into a tin box nailed to a post; then he turned up a
little tin flag to say that he had been there, and the farm folk came
down to the end of the lane and got the mail. The country postman came
only once a day, instead of the three times Sunny Boy was used to seeing
the city postman, but that really made it more exciting.

"My land of Goshen!" said Sunny Boy again. He was rather proud of that
expression, and used it as often as he could.

"I don't think you ought to say that," Araminta had reproved him the
first time she heard him.

"But you say it," argued Sunny Boy.

"Well, that's no reason why you should," retorted Araminta, who, like
many grown-ups, did not always practice what she preached. "Anyway, I'm
going to stop saying it when I'm fifteen."

"Maybe I will, too," promised Sunny Boy blithely. And that was the best
Araminta could hope from him.

"My land--" began Sunny for the third time, but the red automobile of the
postman came to a sliding stop beside the box, and fortunately
interrupted him.

"Hello Blue Jeans!" called the postman, who found a new name for Sunny
Boy every day. "How do you like farming now? Am I to give the mail to
you, or put it in the box?"

This was an every day question. The postman pretended to be very much
surprised when Sunny Boy said he would take the mail, and he always
handed it out a piece at a time, so that Sunny never knew how much was
coming.

"There's two for your grandfather," counted the postman, handing them to
his small friend standing on the running board. "And that's for your
grandmother. Here's the Cloverways' weekly paper for the whole