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 of the simple guilelessness of his parents and did not take teasing with any pleasurable degree of asperity. So the mail-carrier generally treated him with silent contempt. He swung himself from the buckboard and hobbled painfully to the store veranda.
"Business seems pressin' with you, Mr. Todd," he remarked as he lit his pipe. "You're always in an awful rush."
Mr. Todd gave a doubtful grin. "Well say, Coonie, this here's the backwoodsest place I ever seen; us Americans can't stand it."
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