The letter for Jaynes's Post-office reached the end of its journey
first. It wasn't much of a post-office; only an old case of pigeon-holes
set up in one corner of a cross-roads store. A man riding over from the
nearest town twice a week brought the mail-bag on horseback. So few
letters found their way into this, particular bag that Squire Jaynes,
who kept the store and post-office, felt a personal interest in every
envelope that passed through his hands.

"Miss Elizabeth Lloyd Lewis," he spelled aloud, examining the address
through his square-bowed spectacles with a critical squint. "Now, who
under the canopy might _she_ be?"

There was no one in the store to answer the question but an overgrown
boy who had stopped to get his father's weekly paper. He sat on the
counter dangling his big bare feet against a nail-keg, and catching
flies in his sunburned hands, while he waited for the mail to be
opened.

The squire peered inquiringly at him over the square-bowed spectacles.
"Jake," he asked, "ever hear tell of a Miss Elizabeth Lloyd Lewis up
this way?"

"Wy, sure!" drawled the boy. "That's Betty. The Appletons' Betty. Don't
you know? She's that little orphan they're a-bringin' up. I worked there
a while this spring, a-plowin'."

"Hump!" grunted the squire, slipping the letter into the pigeon-hole
marked "A." "If that's who it is, I know all about her. Precious little