sliding window. "If you ain't
goin' up to the Cobdens, ye kin, can't ye? Here's a lot o' letters jest
come that I know they're expectin'. Miss Lucy's" (many of the village
people still called her Miss Lucy, not being able to pronounce her dead
husband's name) "come in yesterday and seems as if she couldn't wait.
This storm made everything late and the mail got in after she left.
There ain't nobody comin' out to-day and here's a pile of 'em--furrin'
most of 'em. I'd take 'em myself if the snow warn't so deep. Don't
mind, do ye? I'd hate to have her disapp'inted, for she's jes' 's sweet
as they make 'em."

"Don't mind it a mite, Susan Tucher," cried the captain. "Goin' there,
anyhow. Got some business with Miss Jane. Lord, what a wad o' them!"

"That ain't half what she gits sometimes," replied the postmistress,
"and most of 'em has seals and crests stamped on 'em. Some o' them
furrin lords, I guess, she met over there."

These letters the captain held in his hand when he pushed open the door
of the sitting-room and stood before the inmates in his rough
pea-jacket, his ruddy face crimson with the cold, his half-moon
whiskers all the whiter by contrast.

"Good-mornin' to the hull o' ye!" he shouted. "Cold as blue blazes
outside, I tell ye, but ye look snug enough in here. Hello, little Pond
Lily! why ain't you out on your sled? Put two more roses in your cheeks
if there was room for 'em. There, ma'am," and he nodded to Lucy and
handed her the letters, "that's 'bout all the mail that come this
mornin'. There warn't nothin' else much in the bag. Susan Tucher asked
me to bring 'em up to you count of the weather and 'count o' your being
in such an all-fired hurry to read 'em."

Little Ellen was in his arms before this speech was finished and
everybody else on their feet shaking hands with the old salt, except
poor, deaf old Martha, who called out, "Good-mornin', Captain Holt," in
a strong, clear voice, and in rather a positive way, but who kept her
seat by the fire and continued her knitting; and complacent Mrs.
Dellenbaugh, the pastor's wife, who, by reason of her position, never
got up for anybody.

The captain advanced to the fire, Ellen still in his arms, shook hands
with Mrs. Dellenbaugh and extended three fingers, rough as lobster's
claws and as red, to the old nurse. Of late years he never met Martha
without feeling that he owed her an apology for the way he had treated
her the day she begged him to send Bart aw