“Ef ye ’low ye’ll feel like a fool axin’ fur that thar letter, Lethe,” said the acute Jerry, divining her thoughts, “I’ll do it. I never mind feelin’ like a fool,—thar’s a heap o’ ’em in this worl’. An’ whenever I acts like one, I remembers I’m in powerful good company. An’ that’s why I don’t try ter be no smarter ’n I am.”
But Alethea said that she would ask for the letter, as aunt Dely had directed. When she alighted from the wagon at Locust Levels, Jerry and Bluff drove off at a whisking pace, which indicated that both might feel relieved.
At the post-office the wood-pile was in front of the house, and therefore the approach was over chips, splinters, and shreds of bark, which gave out a pungent fragrance. It was a low little gray cabin, partly of log and partly of plank, and with a blossoming company of peach-trees about it. They hung over the fence, and all the steep bank down to the road was covered with their pink petals shed in the wind. Some golden candlesticks and “butter-and-eggs” were blooming inside the rickety little palings, and a girl stood upon the porch beside a spinning-wheel.
Alethea noted the unrecognizing stare bent upon her. She opened the gate with difficulty, and went up on the shaded porch. The girl had stopped spinning, but was still gazing at her. A yellow dog, who had been asleep on the floor, his muzzle on his fore-paws, also scanned her curiously, not stirring his head, only lifting his eyes. When she faltered her inquiry for a letter for Mrs. Purvine, the dog got up as briskly as if he were the postmaster.
“Fur who?” demanded a masculine voice, as a man with a plough-line in his hand stepped around the corner, lured by the sound of the colloquy.
“Mis’ Purvine,” repeated Alethea.
He looked at her with a touch of indignation. He would never get through his spring ploughing at this rate. He strode into the house, however, to investigate. “I never hearn o’ her in all my life,” he said tartly.
And Alethea began to have a realization how very wide this world is.
The walls of the room bore many flaming graces of advertisement, pasted over the logs. They were of more fantastic device and a newer fashion than Mrs. Purvine’s relics of her husband’s postmastership. There were two neat beds in the room, a very clean floor, and a woman in the chimney-corner, smoking her pipe, who nodded with grave courtesy to Alethea.