CHAPTER V
ANOTHER SURPRISE
While Blake was tearing off the end of the envelope, preparatory to taking out the enclosure, Joe looked sharply at the red-haired lad who had so unexpectedly delivered it.
"How'd your father come to get our letter, Sam?" asked Joe, for the lad was the son of a farmer, who lived neighbor to Mr. Baker.
"Sim Rolinson, the postmaster, give it to him, I guess," volunteered Sam. "Sim generally takes around the special delivery letters himself, but he must have been busy when this one come in, and he give it to pa. Anyhow, pa says he asked him to deliver it."
"Only he didn't do it," put in Joe. "I thought something was the matter with our mail that we hadn't heard from New York lately. Your father was carrying the letter around in his pocket."
"But he didn't mean to!" spoke Sam quickly. "He forgot all about it until to-day, when he was changing his coat, and it fell out. Then he made me scoot over here with it as fast as I could. He said he was sorry, and hoped he hadn't done any damage."
"Well, I guess not much," Joe responded, for, after all, it was an accommodation to have the letters brought out from the post-office by the neighbors, as often happened. That one should be forgotten, and carried in a pocket, was not so very surprising.
"Then you won't make any fuss?" the barefoot lad went on, eagerly.