in to Elbury. The post-master at Elbury asked if Mrs. King's sons
could undertake this; and accordingly she made a great effort, and
bought a small shaggy forest pony, whom the boys called 'Peggy,' and
loved not much less than their sisters.

It was all very well in the summer to take those two rides in the
cool of the morning and evening; but when winter came on, and Alfred
had to start for Elbury in the tardy dawn of a frosty morning, or
still worse, in the gloom of a wet one, he did not like it at all.
He used to ride in looking blue and purple with the chill; and though
he went as close to the fire as possible, and steamed like the tea-
kettle while he ate his breakfast and his mother sorted the letters,
he had not time to warm himself thoroughly before he had to ride off
to leave them--two miles further altogether; for besides the bag for
the Grange, and all the letters for the Rectory, and for the farmers,
there was a young gentlemen's school at a great old lonely house,
called Ragglesford, at the end of a very long dreary lane; and many a
day Alfred would have given something if those boys' relations would
only have been so good as, with one consent, to leave them without
letters.

It would not have mattered if Alfred had been a stouter boy; but his
mother had always thought he had his poor father's constitution, and
therefore wished him to be more in the house; but his idleness had
prevented his keeping any such place. It might have been the cold
and wet, or, as Alfred thought, it might have been the strain he gave
himself one day when he was sliding on the ice and had a fall; but
one morning he came in from Elbury very pale, and hobbling, as he
said his hip hurt him so much, that Harold must take the letters
round for him.