A rousing cheer went up once more, and John waved his hat in reply, and Susan laughed and nodded, and was suddenly taken by surprise by a dimness in the eyes and a choking sensation in the throat.
“I don’t know however I could have had the heart to run away from them,” she murmured.
And then when the speeches had been made, and the presents delivered, and the wedding-feast, supplemented by many substantial additions, set forth upon the table, and when she sat down with John the elder on her right and John the younger on her left, and Annie’s baby sound asleep in her lap, and looked round at the kindly happy faces, she surreptitiously squeezed her husband’s hand:—
“You and me was very happy this time fifty year,” she said, “but after all—I don’t know—I d’ ’low this is best.”
POSTMAN CHRIS.
It was about four o’clock of the afternoon when Postman Chris set forth on his second round. He swung along at a rapid pace, looking about him with the pleased, alert air of one for whom his surroundings had not yet lost the charm of novelty.
He had, indeed, that very morning entered on his duties as postman for the first time, though he had served his country in another way before. For Postman Chris Ryves had been Trooper Chris Ryves in a previous state of existence. He had had his fill of warfare in South Africa, and had indeed been wounded at Graspan; the left breast of his brand-new blue uniform was decorated with a medal and quite a row of clasps. Though Postman Chris walked at ease he held himself with the erectness due to military training, and his straw hat was perched at the rakish angle which in earlier days, when he had paraded at Knightsbridge Barracks, had caused the heart of more than one artless city maiden to flutter in her bosom.
But for all these past glories of his, Postman Chris was an eminently pleasant and affable person; at any chance salutation of a passer-by the white teeth would flash out in that brown, brown face of his with the most good-humoured of smiles; he delivered up his letters with an urbanity of demeanour that was only surpassed by his soldierly promptitude, and he was willing to exchange the news of the day with any pedestrian who cared to march a short distance in his company.
The bag which he carried was not unduly heavy, nor his way fatiguingly long; it was a six-mile round in fact—starting from Chudbury-Marshall, proceeding through Riverton and Little Branston to the market town of Branston and so back again.
It chanced that as Chris approached Little Branston Schoolhouse on this particular day, his attention was attracted by a hubbub of voices and laughter proceeding from the adjoining field. Pausing a moment in his rapid progress he looked through a gap in the hedge. A feast was evidently in progress; some of the children still sat in rows on the grass, armed with great cups of sickly-looking tea and munching vigorously, buns or hunches of bread-and-jam; others, having finished their meal, were already at play.