The little widow said nothing. Having never received a box, conversation in regard to one couldn't possibly interest her, so she had failed to hear any reference to herself. And at last old Mr. Bramble, having got the white horse safely past the narrowest part of the road, whirled around on his seat and stared at her.
"Sakes alive, Mis' Hansell, are you deef?" he roared. "You've got a box."
"I?" said the little widow, turning a bewildered gaze up at him. "I—what do you mean, Mr. Bramble?"
"You've got a box; box, I said." The expressman roared it at her so that the old white horse jerked up his tired head and took two rapid steps forward, positively by his own accord.
This wholly unsettling the dilapidated bonnet on the little widow's head so that it slid down her neck, with difficulty being recovered from flying out of the wagon altogether, and the shock of the announcement of the box occurring at the same moment, she was speechless again.
"Well, if I ever!" ejaculated Mr. Bramble, when he recovered from the astonishment into which his steed's burst of energy had plunged him. And giving his travelling companion up as a bad job so far as conversation was concerned, he relapsed into a sullen silence, neither of them speaking till a good half mile was slowly traversed.
And then he felt a timid twitch at the end of the old woollen scarf hanging over his back.
"Mr. Bramble, is that true?" and he glanced over his shoulder to see the thin face of the little widow working convulsively, while her faded eyes gleamed with excitement.
"Oh, ye've waked up, hev ye?" cried Mr. Bramble. "Yes, 'tis true, true as gospel writ, Mis' Hansell," he averred solemnly.
"True?" She had only breath to repeat the one word, and she hung on the answer.