k to Lovewell; and,
unless a blizzard was raging, some one had to go for the mail when the
day came. It was usually Jombateeste, who reverted in winter to the type
of habitant from which he had sprung. He wore a blue woollen cap, like a
large sock, pulled over his ears and close to his eyes, and below it his
clean-shaven brown face showed. He had blue woollen mittens, and boots
of russet leather, without heels, came to his knees; he got a pair every
time he went home on St. John's day. His lean little body was swathed in
several short jackets, and he brought the letters buttoned into one
of the innermost pockets. He produced the letter from Jackson promptly
enough when Cynthia came out to the barn for it, and then he made a
show of getting his horse out of the cutter shafts, and shouting
international reproaches at it, till she was forced to ask, "Haven't you
got something for me, Jombateeste?"

"You expec' some letter?" he said, unbuckling a strap and shouting
louder.

"You know whether I do. Give it to me."

"I don' know. I think I drop something on the road. I saw something
white; maybe snow; good deal of snow."

"Don't plague! Give it here!"

"Wait I finish unhitch. I can't find any letter till I get some time to
look."

"Oh, now, Jombateeste! Give me my letter!"

"W'at you want letter for? Always same thing. Well! 'Old the 'oss; I
goin' to feel."

Jombateeste felt in one pocket after another, while Cynthia clung to
the colt's bridle, and he was uncertain till the last whether he had any
letter for her. When it appeared she made a flying snatch at it and ran;
and the comedy was over, to be repeated in some form the next week.

The girl somehow always possessed herself of what was in her letters
before she reached the room where Mrs. Durgin was waiting for hers. She
had to read that aloud to Jackson's mother, and in the evening she had
to read it again to Mrs. Durgin and Whitwell and Jombateeste and Frank,
after they had done their chores, and they had gathered in the old
farm-house parlor, around the air-tight sheet-iron stove, in a heat of
eighty degrees. Whitwell listened, with planchette ready on the table
before him, and he consulted it for telepathic impressions of Jackson's
actual mental state when the reading was over.

He got very little out of the perverse instrument. "I can't seem to work
her. If Jackson was here--"

"We shouldn't need to ask planchette about him," Cynthia once suggested,
wi