Ken shrugged his shoulders as a signal that he had no answers to Sandy’s questions. They were the same questions he had been asking himself. He tilted his head in a gesture toward the street that asked, “Do you want to leave? Shall we give this up?”
Sandy grinned and shook his head slightly. “Why?” he scribbled on the envelope. “Always like to catch up on my reading during vacation. And I’m not hungry yet.”
By the end of the next hour several of the room’s other occupants had departed. The square outside was beginning to fill with the first early shadows of winter darkness.
Suddenly Ken sat erect in his chair. An instant later he was getting to his feet, motioning Sandy to follow. But Sandy had already shut his magazine and stuffed his envelope and pencil back into his pocket.
They had both seen the boy who emerged from the Tobacco Mart and started briskly down the street, pushing a two-wheeled cart laden with packages.
“Delivery boy,” Ken said, as the library door shut behind them and they hurried along the sidewalk in the same direction. “Maybe we can learn something from him.”
The boy’s destination was not far away. It proved to be—as Ken and Sandy had suspected—the nearest post office. The place was crowded at that hour of the day. The boy from the Tobacco Mart took his place at the end of a lengthy line waiting in front of the parcel-post window. The pile of packages he had brought with him was heaped at his feet, so that he could shove them along as the line moved up.
Ken got into place just behind him. “Quite a load you’ve got there,” he said conversationally.
“That?” The boy touched the pile of packages with the toe of his shoe. His voice sounded contemptuous. “That’s nothing. You should have seen what I had to lug around in the old days.”
“Old days?” Ken repeated casually, as if he had no other interest than idle talk to pass the time. “Business better then?”