I could hardly wait to finish breakfast Friday morning, so great was my zeal to be off to the postoffice. It was indeed not altogether daylight when I started at quick step down the hill. Yet, early as I was, there were some twenty people inside Lee Watkins’s store when I arrived, all standing clustered about the high square row of glass-faced pigeonholes reared on the farther end of the counter, behind which could be seen Lee and his sour-faced wife sorting over the mail by lamp-light. “Jee” Hagadorn was in this group and Squire Avery, and most of the other prominent citizens of the neighborhood. All were deeply restless.
Every minute or two some one of them would shout: “Come, Lee, give us out one of the papers, anyway!” But for some reason Mrs. Watkins was inexorable. Her pursed-up lips and resolute expression told us plainly that none would be served till all were sorted. So the impatient waiters bided their time under protest, exchanging splenetic remarks under their breath. We must have stood there three-quarters of an hour.
At last Mrs. Watkins wiped her hands on the apron over her bloomers. Everybody knew the signal, and on the instant a dozen arms were stretched vehemently toward Lee, struggling for precedence. In another moment wrappers had been ripped off and sheets flung open. Then the store was alive with excited voices. “Yes, sir! It’s true! The Copperheads have won!”
“We’re beaten in the district by less’n a hundred!”
“Good-by, human liberty!” “Now we know how Lazarus felt when he was licked by the dogs!” and so on--a stormy warfare of wrathful ejaculations.
In my turn I crowded up, and held out my hand for the paper I saw in the box. Lee Watkins recognized me, and took the paper out to deliver to me. But at the same moment his wife, who had been hastily scanning the columns of some other journal, looked up and also saw who I was. With a lightning gesture she threw out her hand, snatched our _World_ from her husband’s grasp, and threw it spitefully under the counter.
“There ain’t nothing for _you!_” she snapped at me. “Pesky Copperhead rag!” she muttered to herself.
Although I had plainly seen the familiar wrapper, and understood her action well enough, it never occurred to me to argue the question with Mrs.