THE POST-OFFICE

From 8.30 A.M. on, the tide of travel in Ledge always tended towards the post-office, but on the famous morning when Mrs. Lathbun expected to hear from her lawyer, the post-office's vicinity resembled nothing so much as its own appearance upon Election Day. Every one that ever had received a letter intended to be there to see if Mrs. Lathbun would get hers. Long before train time not only the office itself, but the adjoining rooms and the porch outside, were comfortably crowded with a pleasantly anticipative collection of interested observers.

"The United States Government doesn't allow me to interfere in politics, or I'd come right square out with my views," said Mrs. Ray, who held public interest with a tight rein, while awaiting the mail. "My views may be uninteresting, but I hit enough nails on the head to box up a good many people a year."

"What do you think?" some one asked.

"I don't think anything," said Mrs. Ray; "I know!"

"Well, what do you know, then?"

"I know that a letter-getter stays a letter-getter, and the reverse the reverse. Just as I know that case-knives are suspicious and that picking chestnuts may be a bunco game as easy as anything else. I've found it nothing but a bunco game, myself. I've never made my chestnuts pay, just because they were so easy picked up by other people; and you can't hire boys to do your nutting for you,—boys eat up all the profits and most of the chestnuts into the bargain. Yes, indeed. And as for those two up at Nellie's—they'll get no letter. Wait and see."

"But what will happen to them then?" asked Joey Beall, aching to discuss the details of the arrest and the journey to Geneseo.

"I don't know, but I can tell you one piece of news, and it isn't gossip either; it come straight from Nellie O'Neil herself; she's been here this morning."

"Have they found out anything new?"

"Not about them; but her other two is leaving."

"What!"

"Yes, going this afternoon." Mrs. Ray folded her arms and leaned back against the shelves containing her grocery business.

The sensation caused by this extra and wholly unexpected bit of news was thorough and sincere. Everybody looked at everybody else.

Mrs. Dunstall pressed forward. "Haven't they paid, either?" she asked, with horror in her voice.

"Oh, yes, they've paid." Mrs. Ray was quickly reassuring on this point. "But with them, it's something else. I don't know for sure just what, but I guess that eldest one's beginning to see that it's no use as far as she's concerned; but she'll have to do something with that house she was fixing up to live in. Sarah Catt told me she never heard anything so crazy as building a house to live in while a dam that Mr. Ledge don't want built is being built. She says her husband says that dam never will be built. She says Mr. Ledge is very quiet, but he's very sensible and he says there's quicksands all under us."

This statement caused another flutter of sensation.

"Can't you dam a quicksand? I thought it run just like water." Thus Joey Beall's fiancÉe from the back.

"No, you can't," said Pinkie. "I know."

"I'd be sorry to see the dam go," said Mrs. Wiley. "Cousin Catterwallis Granger looked to see it raise all the property around here."

"Drown all the property around here, you mean," said Mrs. Ray. "I thank heaven it's the Dam Commission and not me who'll have to adjust all that dam's going to drown before it gets done. Josiah Bates says he heard that they'll have to take up all the cemeteries from here to Cromwell."

"Why?" asked Pinkie.

"Why? Why, because no matter what powers a commission can hold over the living, no legislature can find a law for drowning the dead, I guess. They've all got to be moved and set out in rows again in a new place. Seems like I never will see the last of Mr. Ray's two wives! But I shan't have to pay for their new start in life this time, anyway."

"Where will they put them next, do you suppose?" said Mrs. Dunstall, referring to the cemeteries—not to Mr. Ray's former wives.

"I guess we'll all want to know that," said Mrs. Ray, turning her head as if she heard the train (the tension in the room was increasing momentarily,—so was the crowd). "I'm sure I wonder what will become of Mr. Ray. I never could feel that I really was done with him, and now it seems maybe I ain't. I wish they'd buy my three-cornered cow pasture for a new cemetery. Then I could cut his grass when I went to milk my cow."

"The dam'll have to pay for the new cemeteries, won't it?" asked Lucia Cosby in some trepidation.

"The dam'll pay for everything. That's why every one wants it so bad," said Mrs. Ray.

"Yes, it is," said Pinkie.

"Which room have the Lathbuns got?" some one asked, looking down towards the O'Neil House.

"The end one," said Mrs. Dunstall.

"The curtains are down," said Nathan, elbowing his way to the window.

"They never get up till noon."

There was a hush,—sudden but intense. The train was approaching.

"Yes, that's the train," said Mrs. Ray; "well, we'll soon know now." She tucked her shawl tighter than ever, and got the key ready.

"Mrs. O'Neil'll be pretty lonesome to-night with them all gone at once," hazarded a bystander.

"She'll miss those girls," said Mrs. Dunstall; "they're real nice young ladies, she says. But she won't miss the Lathbuns."

"We'll miss the Lathbuns," said Mrs. Wiley; "they've been so interesting to talk about. We've even got Uncle Purchase to where he knows they live at Nellie's. I tell you that was work. He's so deaf now." She sighed.

"I guess it wasn't any worse than what the Bentons went through with Gran'ma Benton teaching the parrot when they lived at Nellie's," said Mrs. Ray. "Poor Clay Wright Benton was in here yesterday to see if I'd board Gran'ma Benton and the parrot again. He says Sarah says she won't come home till the parrot leaves, and he's most wild. Gran'ma Benton's been teaching the parrot to say something new. She says 'Where's the Lathbuns, Polly?' and the parrot says 'Out chestnutting,' only it won't say it days. It just says it nights. And nights it's wild over saying it. Last night no one in the house got one wink of sleep. Clay sit up till midnight to ask it where the Lathbuns was, and then Gran'ma Benton sit up and asked it where they was till morning. Poor Clay! He says it's too awful how she's spoiled that parrot. It's afraid of spiders, and it's so afraid of them at night that they have to keep a night-light burning so it can see all over whenever it wakes."

"Such doings!" said Mrs. Wiley, in disgust.

"Yes, indeed," said Mrs. Ray. "I'd like to see myself burning a night-light for a parrot. If it boards with me, it'll take its spiders just as they come."

"That's right," said Pinkie, with decision.

"Well, we don't need any parrot," said Mrs. Wiley. "We've got Uncle Purchase. Not but what I'm amused hearing about the parrot. But then, I've been amused hearing about the Lathbuns, too," she sighed heavily.

"Something else'll come up," said Mrs. Dunstall, cheerfully, "and you don't really need anything to talk about while you've got your Uncle Purchase, you know."

"Well, I suppose maybe not," said Mrs. Wiley, and sighed again.

"Well, thank Heaven," said Mrs. Ray, "I'm never short of two things,—work and talk." She began to finger the key as she spoke, and all ears were at once strained to listen for the sound of the feet of the bearer of the mail-bag.

Deathly silence reigned. In a few seconds the footsteps did approach, the gate creaked and then banged. Mrs. Ray stepped with majestic haste to the window and called out:

"Wipe your feet!"

The obedience that ensued whetted curiosity to more ravenous desire than ever. People had lost sight of the main issue and were all riveted to the single question—would Mrs. Lathbun get her letter?

The door opened and Clay Wright Benton came in with the bag.

"Lay it here," commanded Mrs. Ray, and Clay Wright Benton laid it there and fell back into the crowd behind. Mrs. Ray put on her spectacles and adjusted her shawl. In the intense excitement of the moment, nobody said a word. The room was as full as it would hold, and people who had apparently been secreted in other portions of the house now came pouring in through the doors connecting therewith. The one window facing the porch had turned into a mere honey-comb of faces.

Mrs. Ray took up the key. A thrill went around as she inserted it in the padlock and slowly turned it. Then she took it out of the padlock and the padlock out of the lock. She laid key and padlock carefully aside. "Not a drum was heard, not a funeral note," as she slowly drew the lengthwise iron from the rings and laid that aside. A sort of fresh intenseness pervaded the atmosphere as she opened the mouth of the bag and inserted her arm. While her arm was in and her hand was feeling for the mail, a boy sneezed and every one turned and looked at him witheringly. This little incident was taken in the same light as the inter-mission between two numbers of a concert, for all who were at the doors at once took advantage of it to squeeze inside. The small room, which had been unpleasantly full before, was now packed to suffocation. Mrs. Ray drew out her arm. The interest was mounting each second. She laid two packages, tied each with United States Government twine, upon the counter, turned the bag upside down and shook it. If a pin had fallen out, any one could have heard it, but nothing fell out. Mrs. Ray folded the bag carefully and laid it on the floor behind her. The atmosphere was breathless in every sense of the word. Mrs. Ray untied the first package, taking a full minute to pick out the knot. She hung up the string. The string fell off from where she hung it, and she picked it up and hung it up a second time, this time more slowly and carefully. Then she took out the postmarking machine. A sudden sigh went around; every one had forgotten the necessity of the postmark. Mrs. Ray turned the package face down and post-marked every piece carefully without reading a single address. Then she turned them over, gave her shawl a fresh and most careful adjustment, and proceeded to sort the mail. When it was sorted, she called the roll of names amidst a hush that was awe-inspiring. The few who had letters crowded to the fore, received them and stayed there, greatly to the aggravation of those who had none, and got shoved to the rear accordingly.

Mrs. Ray now untied the second package, and hung up that string. Both strings fell off together. She took up both strings at once, smoothed them out and hung them up again. They stayed hung this time. Then she post-marked the second package. It was a never-to-be-forgotten scene,—the wrought-up faces, the fixed calm of Mrs. Ray herself. Then she called the roll for the second batch. Each time a name was read off, a wave of psychic emotion swept the room. One has to get into the real true life of the country to appreciate the tremendous tumulus which gossip had erected upon which to rear the monument of this moment. One by one the names were all called; one by one the pile of letters in Mrs. Ray's hand diminished. When it came to the last one, and the last one was for Joey Beall, Joey received it almost as if it were some species of sacrament.

"Is that all?" some one in the back asked.

"That's all," said Mrs. Ray.

All turned to go. The outburst of pent-up feelings was tremendous.

"I told you so," Mrs. Ray said over and over again. "I knew they'd got no letter." The babel all of a sudden rose into so much noise that it was evident that the heights to which popular feeling had risen were going a bit higher yet. The egress from the stifling room ceased. Nobody knew just what it was, but all became aware that something fresh had happened. Nobody knew what had happened, and nobody seemed able to find out. All that was known was that something held every one spellbound and motionless in spite of their individual desire to go on out.

After what seemed a deadlock of long duration but which was in fact a matter of but a few seconds, it developed that the trouble arose around the door leading on to the porch. Then it appeared that while every one in the post-office was trying to get out by that door, Mary Cody was trying to get in by the same way, and Mary Cody was young, strong, and determined.

For a few seconds the battle pressed wildly. Then Mary Cody won out and entered. She was out of breath and disheveled.

"Why, what is the matter?" Joey Beall, who was nearest, asked; "there's something new down your way, I'll bet a peanut."

Mary Cody gasped. "Oh, my," she said, "I run right up to tell you. We've just found out as their room is empty. They must of skipped in the night."

"Skipped in the night!" cried Mrs. Dunstall.

"Skipped!" cried Pinkie.

"Oh, Mrs. Ray," wailed Mrs. Wiley, "how'll we ever be able to tell Uncle Purchase!"

But Mrs. Ray stood forth like a modern Medusa in her rage.

"I've been expecting it all along," she exclaimed wrathfully. "I'm a great judge of character, and I never looked for nothing else. Now, how can they be arrested? We must catch 'em!"

"If we can catch 'em!" said Josiah Bates.

"If we can catch them!" said Mrs. Ray,—"if! Young man, they'll be caught. You wait and see!" She hastily threw her shawl over her head, and rushed wildly out with the excited crowd. It is proverbial that there are times when a common sentiment merges all classes into one.