"Oh, now, Hiram, we've got the post-office."
"Yes—much thanks to the rest of 'em! It was me worked and kicked and badgered till I got them a tri-weekly mail, and much use they make of it!"
The squire gazed at the post-office as he spoke. It consisted of an ash "seketary" in one corner of the sitting-room, and was much more than commodious enough for the few letters and newspapers that came to Hardyville three times a week, brought from the county town, eight miles away, by a carrier with a gig. The squire was delivering his opinions as usual while waiting for the carrier to appear.
"I don't rec'lect much public improvements ever bein' in Hardyville," said Mrs. Hardy, drily.
"There would 'a' been," said her husband, testily. "There would 'a' been if the Americans had kept on. To think of them beginning to sell out and move furder west—just as they were gettin' their land into shape for havin' some time to themselves to improve things! Thank goodness, they did put up the church and schoolhouse—I guess we'd never have had neither if it wasn't for the American spirit here when this settlement begun."
"Sho, Hiram? You can't say but what the German folks keeps the church and schoolhouse going."
"Going—yes, going to rack and ruin all the same! Schoolhouse leakin' like sixty—and catch 'em taxin' themselves for a new roof! I wonder Miss Atworth can stay in the place—her and the children mirin' shoe-mouth deep in mud to get to school in the winter! Nary a rod of corduroy will they lay to give their own young ones a decent walk. But they keep their cattle comfortable enough—that means money in their pockets. All they care about is having their corn and stock turn out well. They don't care if the hull township, and the hull Union, too, for that matter, was to go to the dogs. Hello! here comes Jack with the mail-bag!"
A little while later Squire Hardy was in the act of distributing the bag's small contents, when two farmers walked in without even stopping to stamp the mud off their cowhide boots. Mrs. Hardy kept on placidly knitting beyond the fireplace; she was used to such invasions of the sitting-room, from which she had removed the carpet soon after the post-office was granted to the sleepy settlement.
"Draw up to the fire, Mr. Gates," she said, hospitably. "Take that rocker, Mr. Schmidt."