But its day passed,
too, and is gone. The world moves and all the while forward. Not
always with the speed of the wind; but it moves. The letter-carrier
on his collecting rounds with his cart has stopped at the bleaching
yard where his wife and little boy are hanging out washing. He
lights his pipe and, after a brief rest to take breath, turns to
helping the gude-wife hang the things on the line. Then he packs
the dry clothes in his cart, puts the boy in with them and, puffing
leisurely at his pipe, lounges soberly homeward. There is no hurry
with the mail.
There is not. It was only yesterday that, crossing the meadows
on a "local," I found the train pulling up some distance from the
village to let an old woman, coming puffing and blowing from a
farm-house with a basket on her arm, catch up.
"Well, mother, can she hurry a bit?" spake the conductor when she
came within hearing. They address one another in the third person
out of a sort of neighborly regard, it appears.
"Now, sonny," responded the old woman, as she lumbered on board,
"don't I run as fast as I can?"
"And has she got her fare, now?" queried the conductor.
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