Simeon Blair for ten years had been carrying the mail from the mouth of Big Creek to Hyden, going up one day and returning the next. He usually ate his noon-day meal at Litman’s, which he called the “Half-way House.”
About ten days after Mr. Allen and his client had spent the night at the Litman cabin, Blair rode up on his old gray mare and seeing Jeanne coming from the spring, took from a gunny sack a parcel post package about a foot square; and holding it above his head called out: “Guess whose this is?”
“Grandpa’s.”
He shook his head, saying: “Guess again.”
“Granny’s.”
“Wrong, guess again.”
“Is it for us?”
“Yes.”
“Then it must be for me; but I have never had anything before. It is not Christmas. O! who could have sent it?”
[pg 15] She took it with timid joy and examined it carefully, reading aloud in a halting way—“Miss Jeanne—no it’s not Jeanne; what is it Simeon?”