"Well, we'll see!" said the young man, laughing.
"But I thought you was all for the dam, Mrs. Ray," said Mrs. Dunstall, a little surprised. "Whatever has changed you so?"
Mrs. Ray shut her mouth tightly and then opened it with a snap. "I've been thinking," she said abruptly; "and I don't mind changing my opinion when I must. Any one who wants to hold a position under the United States Government has got to have brains and use 'em freely in changing their opinion."
"But you said—" began Mrs. Dunstall.
"What if I did? Like enough I'll say it again. I will, if I feel like it. Yes, indeed. 'He moves in a mysterious way,' you know, and I'm one of His ways, and I've got a right to keep my own counsel about my own work. But—speaking of work—the mail-train was in before you come up. I wonder what's become of the bag!" She went to the window and looked down towards the station. "I do have such trouble to get hold of that bag. That's one of the hardest things about keeping a post-office, is the getting hold of the bag. They don't have any sort of understanding of what a United States Government position means, down at our station; they kick the mail-bag around like it was a crate of hens. Once they asked me if they couldn't have the key at the station, and open the mail because there's always more inhabitants in the station than in the post-office. They seemed to think that was a glory to the station, and a reflection on me. But I don't want to have men sitting around here. I won't have it. The only man who has any legal right to sit around me is in heaven, and just because I'm the postmistress is no reason why I should take chances. If you don't want men sitting around, you can easily keep 'em from doing it by having no chairs for them to sit on. I never have."
"Don't you want me to go down and get the mail?" suggested the young surveyor, somewhat uneasily.
Mrs. Ray turned a severe eye his way. "Have you go down and get the mail! Well, young man, I guess you don't know that it's a penitentiary offence to lay hands on a mail-sack, unauthorized by the United States Government! Yes, indeed. It is, though, and I've had such hard work getting it into people's heads that it is, that I wouldn't authorize no one. No one! Why, when we first was a post-office, I had the most awful time. Everybody coming this way brought the bag with 'em. It's a penitentiary offence to touch the bag, and here Sammy Adams forgot he had it in his buggy one night, and drove home with it. It was when Mrs. Allen's cousin Eliza was dying, and she was so anxious, and no mail-bag at all that night. I tell you I took a firm stand after that; I made the rule and made it for keeps, that no matter if there wasn't but one postal, and all the men in the station had felt the bag to see that there wasn't, the bag must come up to me just the same. You'll find, young man, that if you hold a United States Government position, you'll be expected to uphold the United States Government, and if you're building the dam and employ the men around here, you'll find that to impress them you must keep a bold front. That's why I have my arms folded most of the time."
The young surveyor listened with reverent attention.
"Whose business is it to bring the bag, anyway?" asked Mrs. Dunstall. "I can't wait much longer."
"It isn't anybody's business,—that's what's the trouble. The United States Government don't provide nothing but penalties for touching the mail-bag. That's another hard thing about holding a government position when your hands are as full as mine. At first I couldn't get the mail-bag respected, in fact they used it to keep the door to the station open windy days; and then, when I got it respected by explaining what we was liable to if we didn't respect it, I couldn't get no one to touch it any more. I had to wheel it up and down in the baby-carriage for a while, and then I looked up the law and found I could delegate my authority; so since then Mr. Hopkins has delegated for me except when he goes to Ledge Lake, and when he does that I take it in a wheelbarrow. I give the baby-carriage to Lucy. She had that baby, you know. Well, of course a baby needs a carriage, so I give her ours."