"If," began Lippity-Libby, "you go on gettin' letters at the rate o' one a day, there's only two ways to it. Either you'll practise yourself not to keep the King's postman waitin', or you'll make it up afterwards in the shape of a Christmas-box. . . . I ought in fairness to tell you," Lippity-Libby added, "that there is a third way— though I hate the sight of it—and that's a letter-box with a slit in the door. Parson Steele has one. When I asked en why, he laughed an' talked foolish, an' said he'd put it up in self-defence. Now, what sort o' defence can a letter-box be to any man's house? And that was six months afore the War, too!"
"Another letter for me?" Nicky-Nan hobbled forward, blinking against the sunlight.
"'Ho-Haitch-Hem-Hess'—that means 'On His Majesty Service'; post-mark, Troy. . . . Hullo!—anything wrong wi' the house?"
"Eh?"
"Plasterin' job?"
Nicky-Nan understood. "What's that to you?" he asked curtly.
"I don' know how it should happen," mused Lippity-Libby after a pause of dejection; "but the gettin' of letters seems to turn folks suspicious-like all of a sudden. You'd be surprised the number that puts me the very question you've just asked. An' they tell me that 'tis with money the same as with letters. I read a tract one time, about a man that found hisself rich of a sudden, and instead o' callin' his naybours together an' sayin' 'Rejoice with me,' what d'ye think he went an' did?"
"Look here," said Nicky-Nan, eyeing the postman firmly. "If you're hidin' something behind this clack, I'll trouble you to out with it."
"If you don't want the story, you shan't have it," said Lippity-Libby, aggrieved. "'Tis your loss, too; for it was full of instruction, an' had a moral at the end in different letterin'. . . . You're upset this mornin', that's what you are: been up too early an' workin' too hard at that plasterin' job, whatever it is." The little man limped back into the roadway and cricked his head back for a gaze up at the chimneys. "Nothing wrong on this side, seemin'ly. . . . Nor, nor there wasn't any breeze o' wind in the night, not to wake me. . . . Anyways, you're a wonderful forgivin' man, Nicholas Nanjivell."
"Why so?"