"Mary, you are late--and what have we here?"

He was beaming at Jack as he came across the bridge and he broke into
hearty laughter as he viewed Jack's preoccupation with the
second-class matter.

"At last! At last we have rural free delivery in Little Rivers! We are
the coming town! And your uniform, sir"--Jasper Ewold took in the cowboy
outfit with a sweeping glance which warmed with the picturesque
effect--"it's a great improvement on the regulation; fit for free
delivery in Little Rivers, where nobody studies to be unconventional in
any vanity of mistaking that for originality, but nobody need be
conventional."

He took some of the cargo in his own hands. With the hearty breeze of his
personality he fairly blew Jack onto the porch, where magazines and
pamphlets were dropped indiscriminately in a pile on a rattan settee.

"You certainly have enough reading matter," said Jack. "And I must be
getting on to camp."

For he had no invitation to stay from Mary and the conventional fact
that he had to recognize is that a postman's call is not a social call.
As he turned to go he faced her coming across the bridge. An Indian
servant, who seemed to have materialized out of the night, had taken
charge of her pony.

"To camp! Never!" said Jasper Ewold. "Sir Knight, slip your lance in the
ring of the castle walls--but having no lance and this being no castle,
well, Sir Knight in _chaparejos_--that is to say, Sir Chaps--let me