toast and coffee, before them.
"I'm going for the mail after breakfast, Mary," Alva said; "shall I bring yours?"
"Can't I bring yours?" said Mary Cody. "I can run up there just as well as not." Mary Cody was all smiles at the mere idea.
"No, I'll have to go myself to-day, I think. I'm expecting a registered letter."
"I'll be much obliged then if you will bring mine."
"If there are any for the house, I'll bring them all," Alva said; "will you tell Mrs. Lathbun that?"
"I'll tell her if I see her, but they're both gone. They went out early – off chestnutting, I suppose."
"Oh!"
"Who is Mrs. Lathbun?" Lassie asked, when Mary Cody had gone out of the room.
"I spoke of her before and you asked about her then, didn't you? And I meant to tell you and forgot. She's another boarder, a lady who is here with her daughter. Such nice, plain, simple people. You'll like them both."
"I thought that we were to be here all alone."
"We are, to all intents and purposes. The Lathbuns won't trouble us. They are not intrusive, only interesting when we meet at table or by accident."
"Every one interests you, Alva; but I don't like strangers."
Alva sighed and smiled together.
"I learned to fill my life with interest in people long ago," she said simply; "it's the only way to keep from getting narrow sometimes."
Lassie looked at her earnestly.
"Does every one that you meet interest you really?" she asked.
"I think so; I hope so, anyway."
"Don't you ever find any one dull?"
Alva looked at her with a smile, quickly repressed. "No one is really dull, dear, or else every one is dull; it's all in the view-point. The interest is there if we want it there; or it isn't there, if we so prefer. That's all."
There was a little pause, while the young girl thought this over.
"I suppose that one is happiest in always trying to find the interest," she said then slowly; "but do tell me more about the Lathbuns."
"Presupposing them in the dull catalogue?"
Lassie blushed, "Not necessarily," she said, half confusedly.
Alva laughed at her face, "I don't know so very much about them, except that they interest me. The mother is large and rather common looking, but a very fine musician, and the daughter is a pale, delicate girl with a romance."
Lassie's face lit up: "Oh, a romance! Is it a nice romance? Tell me about it."
"It's rather a wonderful romance in my eyes. I'll tell it all to you sometime, but that was the train that came in just now, and I want to get the mail and go on over to the house, so we'll have to put off the romance for the present, I'm afraid."
"I don't hear the train."
"Maybe not – but it went by."
"Went by! And the mail! How does the mail get off by itself?"
"Oh, my dear, I must leave you to learn about the mail from Mrs. Ray. She'll explain to you all about what happens to the Ledge mail when the train rushes by. It's one of her pet subjects."
"Do you know you're really very clever, Alva; you seem to be plotting to fill me full of curiosity about everything and everybody in this little out-of-the-way corner in the world? Nobody could ever be dull where you are."
A sudden shadow fell over the older's face at that; a wistful wonder crept to her eyes.
"I wish I could believe that," she said.
"But you can, dear. You've always seemed to me to be just like that French woman who was the only one who could amuse the king, even after she'd been his wife for forty years. You'd be like that."
Alva rose, laughing a little sadly. "God grant that it may be so," she said, "there are so many people who need amusing after forty years. But, dear, you know I told you last night that I sent for you to come and teach and learn, and you are teaching already."
"What am I teaching?" Lassie's eyes opened widely.
"You are teaching me what I really am, and that's a lesson that I need very much just now. It would be so very easy to forget what I really am these days. My head is so often dizzy."
"Why, dear? What makes you dizzy?"
"Oh, because the world seems slipping from me so fast. I could so easily quit it altogether. And I must not quit it. I have too much to do. And I am to have a great task left me to perform, perhaps. Oh, Lassie, it's hopeless to tell you anything until I have begun by telling you everything. You'll see then why I want to die, and why I can't."
"Alva!"
"Don't be shocked, dear; you don't know what I mean at all now, but later you will. Come, we must be going. No time to waste to-day."
They went up-stairs for hats and wraps, and then came down ready for the October sunshine. It was fine to step into the crispness and breathe the ozone of its glory. On the big stone cistern cover by the door a fat little girl sat, hugging a cat and swinging her feet so as to kick caressingly the brown and white hound that lay in front of her.
"A nice, round, rosy picture of content," Alva said, smiling at the tot. "I love to see babies and animals stretched out in the sun, enjoying just being alive."
"I enjoy just being alive myself," said Lassie.
They went up the path that ran beside the road and, arriving at the post-office, turned in at the gate and climbed the three steps. The post-office door stuck, and Alva jammed it open with her knee. Then she went in, followed by Lassie.
The post-office was just an extremely small room, two thirds of which appeared reserved for groceries, ranged upon shelves or piled in three of its four corners. The fourth corner belonged to the United States Government, and was screened off by a system of nine times nine pigeonholes, all empty. Behind the pigeonholes Mrs. Ray was busy stamping letters for the outgoing mail.
"You never said that she kept a grocery store, too," whispered Lassie.
"No, but I told you that I'd forgotten ever so many things that she did," whispered Alva in return.
The lady behind the counter calmly continued her stamping, and paid not the slightest attention to them.
They sat down upon two of the three wooden chairs that were ranged in front of a pile of sacks of flour and remained there, meekly silent, until some one with a basket came in and took the remaining wooden chair. All three united then in adopting and maintaining the reverential attitude of country folk awaiting the mail's distribution, and Lassie learned for the first time in her life how strong and binding so intangible a force as personal influence and atmosphere may become, even when it be only the personal influence and atmosphere of a country postmistress. It may be remarked in passing, that not one of the letters then being post-marked received an imprint anything like as strong as that frame of mind which the postmistress of Ledge had the power
