The Late Mrs. Null

by Frank R. Stockton

CHAPTER VI.

It was mail day at the very small village known as Howlett's, and to the fence in front of the post-office were attached three mules and a horse. Inside the yard, tied to the low bough of a tree, was a very lean and melancholy horse, on which had lately arrived Wesley Green, the negro man who, twice a week, brought the mail from Pocohontas, a railway station, twenty miles away. There was a station not six miles from Howlett's, but, for some reason, the mail bag was always brought from and carried to Pocohontas; Wesley Green requiring a whole day for a deliberate transit between the two points.

In the post-office, which was the front room of a small wooden house approached by a high flight of steps, was the postmistress, Miss Harriet Corvey, who sat on the floor in one corner, while before her extended a semicircle of men and boys. In this little assemblage certain elderly men occupied seats which were considered to belong to them quite as much as if they had been hired pews in a church, and behind them stood up a row of tall young men and barefooted boys of the neighborhood, while, farthest in the rear, were some quiet little darkies with mail bags slung across their shoulders.

On a chair to the right, and most convenient to

Miss Harriet, sat old Madison Chalkley, the biggest and most venerable citizen of the neighborhood. Mr Chalkley never, by any chance, got a letter, the only mail matter he received being, "The Southern Baptist Recorder," which came on Saturdays, but, like most of the people present, he was at the post-office every mail day to see who got anything. Next to him sat Colonel Iston, a tall, lean, quiet old gentleman, who had, for a long series of years, occupied the position of a last apple on a tree. He had no relatives, no friends with whom he corresponded, no business that was not conducted by word of mouth. In the last fifteen years he had received but one letter, and that had so surprised him that he carried it about with him three days before he opened it, and then he found that it was really intended for a gentleman of the same name in another county. And yet everybody knew that if Colonel Iston failed to appear in his place on mail day, it would be because he was dead or prostrated by sickness.

With the mail bag on the floor at her left, Miss Harriet, totally oblivious of any law forbidding the opening of the mails in public, would put her hand into its open mouth, draw forth a letter or a paper, hold it up in front of her spectacles, and call out the name of its owner. Most of the letters went to the black boys with the mail bags who came from country houses in the neighborhood, but whoever received letter, journal, or agricultural circular, received also at the same time the earnest gaze of everybody else in the room. Sometimes there was a letter for which there was no applicant present and then Miss Harriet would say: "Is anybody going past Mrs Willis Summerses?" And if anybody was, he would take the letter, and it is to be hoped he remembered to deliver it in the course of a week.

In spite of the precautions of the postmistress uncalled for letters would gradually accumulate, and there was a little bundle of these in one of the few pigeon holes in a small desk in the corner of the room, in the drawer of which the postage stamps were kept. Now and then a registered letter would arrive, and this always created considerable sensation in the room, and if the legal recipient did not happen to be present, Miss Harriet never breathed a quiet breath until he or she had been sent for, had taken the letter, and given her a receipt. Sometimes she sat up as late as eleven o'clock at night on mail days, hoping that some one who had been sent for would arrive to relieve her of a registered letter.

All the mail matter had been distributed, everybody but Mr Madison Chalkley had left the room; and when the old gentleman, as was his wont on the first day of the month, had gone up to the desk, untied the bundle of uncalled-for letters, the outer ones permanently rounded by the tightness of the cord, and after carefully looking over them, one by one, had made his usual remark about the folly of people who wouldn't stay in a place until their letters could get to them, had tied up the bundle and taken his departure; then Miss Harriet put the empty mail bag under the desk, and went up-stairs where an old lady sat by the window, sewing in the fading light.

"No letters for you to-day, Mrs Keswick," said she.

"Of course not," was the answer, "I didn't expect any."