“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.
Watkins. Her bustling, determined demeanor, perhaps also her bloomers, had always filled me with awe. I hung about for a time, avoiding her range of vision, until she went out into her kitchen. Then I spoke with resolution to Lee:
“If you don’t give me that paper,” I said, “I’ll tell Abner, an’ he’ll make you sweat for it!”
The postmaster stole a cautious glance kitchen-ward. Then he made a swift, diving movement under the counter, and furtively thrust the paper out at me.
“Scoot!” he said, briefly, and I obeyed him.
Abner was simply wild with bewildered delight over what this paper had to tell him. Even my narrative about Mrs. Watkins, which ordinarily would have thrown him into transports of rage, provoked only a passing sniff. “They’ve only got two more years to hold that post-office,” was his only remark upon it.
Hurley and Janey Wilcox and even the Underwood girl came in, and listened to Abner reading out the news. He shirked nothing, but waded manfully through long tables of figures and meaningless catalogues of counties in other States, the names of which he scarcely knew how to pronounce: “‘Five hundred and thirty-one townships in Wisconsin give Brown 21,409, Smith 16,329, Ferguson 802, a Republican loss of 26.’ Do you see that, Hurley? It’s everywhere the same.”
“‘Kalapoosas County elects Republican Sheriff for first time in history of party.’ That isn’t so good, but it’s only one out of ten thousand.”
“‘Four hundred and six townships in New Hampshire show a net Democratic loss of—’ pshaw! there ain’t nothing in that! Wait till the other towns are heard from!”