CHAPTER VIII
A LETTER FROM DADDY
“My land of Goshen!”
Sunny Boy sat on the fence post waiting for the postman. He was great friends now with the postman who came to the farm, almost as great friends as with the cheerful, gray-uniformed letter-carrier in the city, the one who brought letters to the house with the shining numbers that Harriet faithfully polished.
This postman in the country did not wear a uniform, and he came in a little red automobile that one could hear chug-chugging half a mile away. He did not whistle either, as the city postman did, but he put the letters and parcels into a tin box nailed to a post; then he turned up a little tin flag to say that he had been there, and the farm folk came down to the end of the lane and got the mail. The country postman came only once a day, instead of the three times Sunny Boy was used to seeing the city postman, but that really made it more exciting.
“My land of Goshen!” said Sunny Boy again. He was rather proud of that expression, and used it as often as he could.
“I don’t think you ought to say that,” Araminta had reproved him the first time she heard him.
“But you say it,” argued Sunny Boy.
“Well, that’s no reason why you should,” retorted Araminta, who, like many grown-ups, did not always practice what she preached. “Anyway, I’m going to stop saying it when I’m fifteen.”
“Maybe I will, too,” promised Sunny Boy blithely. And that was the best Araminta could hope from him.