Page:Cornelia Meigs-The Pirate of Jasper Peak.djvu/42

, a longing for his father, for the comfortable, ordinary life at home, for everything that was usual and familiar. What would become of him here, he wondered, what could be the end of this venture “on his own”? What a strange place it was to which his journey had led  him, what strange people he had met or heard  of that day, the clumsy, friendly Swedes, kind-hearted Linda Ingmarsson, that mysterious Jake  out on the mountain, that brother Oscar whose  road it was that climbed the hill. He ran through the list over and over and found that his  mind, with odd insistence, kept coming back to  the road that “now went nowhere but some day  would go far.”

The announcement that supper was ready interrupted his reflections, after which he received a pressing invitation from Carl to go with him  to get the mail. Rudolm knew no such luxury as a postman, it went every night to fetch its letters at the general store where John Benson sold  meat and calico and mackinaw coats. The little postmistress who sorted the mail behind her own