l of the Hoe
machine burst, and there wasn't a spare one in stock, nor in the
town. Though he had been warned months ago, when a similar
accident happened, that the last spare wheel had been used, he
would not spend the money to stock one or two. We had to borrow
one from the _Milton Daily Post_. You are well out of the hole,
I can tell you.

"I read the _Watchman_ every week, and think it immense; but you
fly above me, old man. I'm only a country scribbler, and must
admire you a long way off. I takes off my hat to you, sir.

"The mater is rather queer just now, and I hope she isn't going
to kipper. But one never can tell. 'Our times are in His hand,'
that's Browning, isn't it? I saw it quoted the other day, and
managed to drag it into a leaderette this week. Sounds well, I
think.

"Pater joins in kind regards--at least, I suppose he does,
though I haven't asked him--and Flo is sending her warmest
breathings direct, I understand.--Believe me, ever thine,

"EDGAR WINTON."

Henry was inclined to resent the flippant tone of the letter, the
senseless slang; but he remembered that it was "only Edgar's way," and
stuffed the sheets back into their envelope and into his inside pocket.
Flo's letter he turned over again as he lifted it and Dora's from his
knee. He opened his sister's next, and laid the other down.

It was the usual Hampton budget of uninteresting details about the
doings of that little community, and Henry read it in his usual
perfunctory way, scarce recollecting the people whose names were
recalled by it. "Who on earth is old Gatepost? I believe she means old
John Crew, the farm bailiff. I'm surprised he is only dying now. Thought
he would have been dead long ago." Often his thoughts would run thus
over some bit of news from Dora. She seemed to write from out the past.

"Hoping you are well, as we all are when this leaves. No more at
present, from your loving Sis."

The phrase might have been stereotyped; it was Dora's one form of
"drawing to a close." Indeed, she did not draw thither; she simply
closed according to formula when she had spun her loose threads of news
into some semblance of a web of words.

Dora's letter was presently keeping Edgar's company, with many another
tattered envelope and note, in Henry's pocket.

He turned to the third of the letters with no apparent