“Sure,” responded Creede, and stepping across the broad living-room he threw the bundle carelessly on the bed.
“You’re like me,” he remarked, drawing his chair up sociably to supper, “I ain’t got a letter fer so long I never go near the dam’ post office.”
He sighed, and filled his plate with beans.
“Ever been in St. Louis?” he inquired casually. “No? They say it’s a fine burg. Think I’ll save up my dinero and try it a whirl some day.”
The supper table was cleared and Creede had lit his second cigarette before Hardy reverted to the matter of his mail.
“Well,” he said, “I might as well look over those letters––may be a thousand-dollar check amongst them.”
Then, stepping into his room, he picked up the package, examined it curiously, and cut the cords with his knife.
A sheaf of twenty or more letters spilled out and, sitting on the edge of the bed, he shuffled them over in the uncertain light of the fire, noting each inscription with a quick glance; and as he gathered up the last he quietly tucked three of them beneath the folds of his blankets––two in the same hand, bold and dashing yet stamped with a certain feminine delicacy and grace, and each envelope of a pale blue; the third also feminine, but inscribed in black and white, a crooked little hand that strayed across the page, yet modestly shrank from trespassing on the stamp.
With the remainder of his mail Hardy blundered over to the table, dumping the loose handful in a great pile before the weak glimmer of the lamp.