Chapter 19: The Trials of an Assistant Postmaster

By all laws of mercy the post-master in a small town should be old and mentally near-sighted. Jimmy Reed was young and curious. He had even yielded to temptation once in removing a stamp on a letter from Annette Fenton to a strange suitor. Not that he wanted to delay the letter. He only wanted to know if she put tender messages under the stamp when she wrote to other people.

During the two years Sandy remained at the university, Jimmy handed his letters out of the post-office window to the judge once a week, following them half-way with his body to pick up the verbal crumbs of interest the judge might let fall while perusing them. The supremacy which Sandy had established in the base-ball days had lent him a permanent halo in the eyes of the younger boys of Clayton. “Letter from Sandy this morning,” Jimmy would announce, adding somewhat anxiously, “Ain’t he on the team yet?”

The judge was obliging and easy-going, and he frequently gratified Jimmy’s curiosity.

“No; he’s studying pretty hard these days. He says he is through with athletics.”

“Does he like it up there?”

“Oh, yes, yes; I guess he likes it well enough,” the judge would answer tentatively; “but I am afraid he’s working too hard.”

“Looks like a pity to spoil such a good pitcher,” said Jimmy, thoughtfully. “I never saw him lose but one game, and that nearly killed him.”

“Disappointment goes hard with him,” said the judge, and he sighed.

Jimmy’s chronic interest developed into acute curiosity the second winter—about the time the Nelsons returned to Clayton after a long absence.

On Thanksgiving morning he found two letters bearing his hero’s handwriting. One was to Judge Hollis and one to Miss Ruth Nelson. The next week there were also two, both of which went to Miss Nelson. After that it became a regular occurrence.

Jimmy recognized two letters a week from one person to one person as a danger-signal. His curiosity promptly rose to fever-heat. He even went so far as to weigh the letters, and roughly to calculate the number of pages in each. Once or twice he felt something hard inside, and upon submitting the envelop to his nose, he distinguished the faint fragrance of pressed flowers. It was perhaps a blessing in disguise that the duty of sorting the outgoing mail did not fall to his lot. One added bit of information would have resulted in spontaneous combustion.