Duncan Polite, the Watchman of Glenoro. Mary Esther Miller MacGregor
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appeared far up the slope. "Well, I guess I'll have to choke off a few. Gedap thar, whatter ye doin'!" He gave old Bella a lash with the whip which she noticed merely by a switch of her tail. His shoulders sank to their accustomed limpness and he took no notice of Duncan's thanks as he drove off. He was really disappointed, for he had prepared such a version of the story, purporting to have come from the Oa, as would set Splinterin' Andra in a rage forever. He sighed over his loss.
But his attention was soon diverted by a welcome sight. Sim Baskerville, the village store-keeper and postmaster, commonly called Basketful in accordance with the custom of the country, could already be seen, even from this height, coming out upon the veranda at short intervals to see if the mail were coming. Nothing annoyed the postmaster so much as to have the mail arrive late, and nothing pleased the mail-carrier so much as to annoy the postmaster. Mr. Basketful was a choleric Englishman, and one of Coonie's chief diversions was to put him into a rage by a dilatory approach to the village. So, seeing his enemy on the lookout, he let old Bella crawl down the hill with maddening slowness, looking round, meanwhile, for somebody with whom he might stop and talk.
The first opportunity presented itself with the whirring of a sewing machine, coming from a little house on the edge of the village. It was a tiny white cottage, apparently kept from encroaching upon the road by a thick rope of lilacs, a trim little place, painfully neat. When that sound emanated from within, Coonie knew that the village dressmaker was at home; and as she bore a fierce hatred to him and all his doings, he never failed to give her a call when possible. He drew up his buckboard before the lilac bushes, therefore, happily conscious of certain vigorous gesticulations from the post-office veranda, of a character calculated to encourage rapid approach.
"Hello! in there!" he shouted.
There was no response, except for a more determined whizzing of the machine.
"Got a message for you, 'Liza!"
To the angry occupant of the house it was agony to go on sewing. Who knew but that, for once, the old fool might be telling the truth, she reflected. Perhaps someone in the Oa had sent word with him that she was wanted there for a day's sewing, and she knew nothing would please Coonie better than to have her refuse to listen.
But by this time her tormentor, despairing of ever enticing her out by fair words, resolved to launch a bomb which he knew was sure to bring the besieged raging to the walls. "Got a message from Tom Poole!" he roared, loud enough to be heard at Mrs. Fraser's across the valley. "He says to tell you he's comin' down sparkin' to-morrow night!"
Miss Cotton flashed into the doorway, white with rage. She, who had never seen the man who dared to pay her loverlike attentions, to have her name bawled out over the countryside coupled with that of a man who was a widower of six months with a family of as many children! She shook her scissors in his face.
"If you don't shut up your tomfoolery, you blatherin' old idiot!" she cried, in a sort of shrieking whisper, "I'll throw boilin' water over you!"
Coonie stared in injured righteousness. "Well I never! That's all the thanks I get for obligin' you. I can't help it if he's gone spooney on you; next time I bring you a message——"
"Yes, next time you bring me a message it'll be the last you'll take to a livin' soul. Drive your old hearse away from my door, will you, an' tell your lies to somebody that's big enough fool to believe you!"
The door slammed and the sewing machine buzzed wrathfully, and Coonie sent Bella scrambling down the hill, his drooping shoulders heaving with convulsive laughter. To put 'Liza Cotton into a rage, while Sim Basketful, in a similar condition, was popping in and out of his store door like a jack-in-the-box, was worth the whole day's drive. He meandered along chuckling loudly, but suddenly checked his mirth as he espied Maggie Hamilton standing at the gate beneath the oaks and holding a bundle under her arm. This was evidently intended for him, so he drove to the opposite side of the road and crawled along with drooping shoulders and abstracted mien.
But this particular Miss Hamilton understood Coonie's dark ways and knew how to deal with him. She darted across the road and caught old Bella by the head.
"Hold on now, smarty!" she said. "You needn't pretend you've turned deaf and blind all at once, you're stupid enough without. Here's a parcel for Aunt Mary McLean, Coonie, and mother wants you to take it to her, please, like an old duck. You know Aunt Mary thinks you're the handsomest fellow in Oro."
But Coonie was not be flattered into obliging anyone. "Look here, you," he growled, "what d'ye think I run this mail for, anyhow? Think it's a charitable institution? You tell your Aunt Mary Maria stick-in-the-mud that if she thinks the Almighty created me to cart truck over the country for lazy lumps like you that thinks they're too good to walk, she'd better go an' get informed all over again."
But Maggie had expected this and was prepared. "Jess! Sarah! Bell!" she cried, "come out here quick and settle this old donkey! He's gone balky again!"
There was a chorus of shrieks, a swish of skirts down the garden path, and reinforcements in the shape of three more young ladies emerged from the gate and fell upon the rebellious mail-carrier. They climbed into the shaking old buckboard and Maggie seized the reins and turned old Bella up the hill again.
"Now, we'll drive you clean back to Lakeview, if you don't speak up smart and say you'll take it!" she cried.
But Coonie did not mind. Mr. Basketful was by this time in the middle of the road, so he prolonged the encounter as long as possible.
"Go ahead," he said, settling himself comfortably in his seat; "you'll soon be at the Oa, if you keep on. I bet that's where Jessie wants to go to see what's the latest news from Don Neil."
"Yes, and you want to go up the hill and talk to 'Liza Cotton," retorted Jessie.
"That's it," laughed Maggie, pulling the old horse almost into the ditch, "you'd trot off with a bundle quick enough if she asked you."
Coonie roared. "Well, that's true. Haw! Haw! I'd start off that quick I'd never git stopped. Gosh! but ain't she the old scorpion!" he exclaimed with feeling, "Say, if her an' me was the only folks left in the world, I'd kill her an' live alone. See here, you scalawags, clear out an' leave that poor brute alone, an' I'll take your trash."
It was a surrender. The victorious quartette leaped from the buckboard and retired, with many admonitions for his guidance in his future dealings with them, warnings which Coonie pretended not to hear.
His shoulders sagged again as he slowly approached the post-office. He paused a few moments on the bridge, to gaze meditatively into the water, then he spent some time gesticulating to an imaginary person down at the mill-dam, and at last, slowly and with every appearance of insupportable weariness, dragged up to the post-office door.
"Kind of hot," he remarked genially, noticing the perspiring countenance of the indignant postmaster.
Mr. Basketful took the mail-bag with a withering air. "Kind o'," he remarked sarcastically. "Guess your 'orse 'ad a sunstroke on the road. 'Ere 'Syl, tend to that hanimal, will you?"
A stylishly dressed young man came down with elegant leisure from his position on a cracker barrel and proceeded to water Coonie's horse. The mail-carrier's helpless condition called for assistance which was always freely rendered. The person to whom the task generally fell was Mr. Sylvanus Todd, who, by reason of his leisurely habits, found plenty of time, when not assisting his father in the cheese factory, to lounge around the post-office and look up the street to see what the Hamilton girls were doing. Sylvanus always assisted Coonie most willingly; he was a young man who was noted all over the township of Oro for his obliging ways and his mannerly deportment. Indeed, Mr. Todd posed as an authority on all matters of etiquette. He even went so far once as to admonish Wee Andra on the errors of his pedestrianism. "When you're walkin' with a lady, Andra," Sylvanus had said kindly, "you'd ought to let her walk up agin' the buildin's." But so far from improving the giant's manners this good advice only caused him to place his adviser in a tank of cheese factory whey and to continue thereafter to walk as seemed right in his own eyes.
Coonie did not care for Syl Todd; he had much