Mrs. Lee was placidly and patiently unmingling her kitten and her wool, which had revolved and resolved themselves into one untidy ball with a miewing centre.
Two sounds broke upon the lull in conversation.
Near by clattered the hoofs of the letter carrier’s pony rounding the hill’s turn to the front gate. Far down by the river the old bell rang its song of ten o’clock into the mouth of the golden horn valley, and the tones—muted but round and perfect—floated up across the hillside gardens and carried, even here, their separate theme dimly above the murmurs of wind-rippled leaves and dripping bucket.
“Morning, Mrs. Lee. Morning, Mrs. Mearely, ma’am.”
Mr. Horace Ruggle—who was the mail carrier twice daily when he was not the telegraph agent, and vice versa—blinked perspiringly over the gate. Mr. Ruggle was stout—deliberately and tyrannically stout, no doubt his equine would have said, had there been a bit of speech instead of a bit of steel in his mouth—and whatever he did was done with gusty effort.
“Good-morning, Mr. Ruggle. Is it possible that you have a letter for me?” Mrs. Lee queried, putting her knitting aside and rising to the rare occasion. Rosamond ran forward to receive it.
“One for you and one for Mrs. Mearely.” Mr. Ruggle put the letters into Rosamond’s hand. “Yours has come quite a ways; but Mrs. Mearely’s is just from Poplars. It’ll be from her folks, likely. Mebbe her mother’s took sick or her sister’s children’s caught a epidemic; or, more likely yet, has had a accident with that new farm machinery.”
“Oh, dear, oh, dear, I hope not!” Mrs. Lee looked upon him with gentle disapprobation as if she considered his attempts to rival the literary imagination of Edgar Allan Poe wholly out of tune with a midsummer morning in Roseborough. “Do tell me there is nothing of the sort, Mrs. Mearely, I can’t enjoy my own missive until I know. Mr. Ruggle has alarmed me.”
“Telegrapher and postman,” Mr. Ruggle wheezed, mopping his huge cheeks, “I’m the Bad News Syndicate. I made that anecdote first along in the ‘nineties,’ when the newspaper at Trenton joined the news syndicate and gave me the idea; but it’s a joke that’s always good. Back about six years ago, I added something to it that’s made it even better. It’s this: ‘If I carry bad news and don’t know it, who carries worse and knows it?’ Answer: the undertaker.’” He took his own time and told it to the bitter end despite Mrs. Lee’s polite, but none-the-less quite marked, attempts to prevent the sombre jest’s completion.
“Yes, yes, Mr. Ruggle. You are fond of your wit, we know; but while you are entertaining us, think of the impatient ones elsewhere waiting for their letters.”