"I sha'n't need you," I told him. "Mary and I'll run things as well as we can. She makes a good fust mate, Mary does."
"You bet!" says he. "I feel a little conscience-struck to leave you just now, with that West End crowd tryin' to make trouble for you, but Congressman Shelton is your friend and he'll look out for you in Washin'ton."
"Don't you worry about that," I says. "I ain't scared of Bill Phipps or Ike Hamilton—much, or any of their West End crew. The decent folks in town are on my side, and with Shelton to back me up at Washin'ton, I cal'late I'll keep my job till you come back anyhow."
The train started and Mary and I waved till 'twas out of sight. Then we went back to the store. I give in that the old feelin', the feelin' that I'd had when Jim was sick out West, that of bein' adrift without an anchor, was hangin' around me a little, but I braced up and vowed to myself that I'd do the best I could. If this post-office row did get dangerous, I might telegraph for Jacobs, but I wouldn't till the ship was founderin'.
I suppose you can always get up an opposition party. There was one amongst the Children of Israel in Moses's time, and there's been plenty ever since. So long as somebody has got somethin' there'll always be somebody else to want to get it away from him. That's human nature, and there's as much human nature in Ostable, size considered, as there was in the Land of Canaan.
I'd been postmaster at Ostable for quite a spell. I didn't try for the position, I was mad when 'twas given to me, there wa'n't much of anything in it but a lot of fuss and trouble, and I'd said forty times over that I wished I didn't have it. But when the gang up at the West End of the town set out to take it away from me I r'ared up on my hind legs and swore I'd fight for my job till the last plank sunk from under me. Don't sound like sense, does it? It wa'n't—'twas just more human nature.
Course the opposition wa'n't large and 'twa'n't very influential. Old man William Phipps and young Ike Hamilton was at the head of it, and they had forty or fifty West-Enders to back 'em up. Phipps had been one of the leading workers for Abubus Payne, the chap I beat for the app'intment in the fust place; and young Hamilton was junior partner in the firm of "Ichabod Hamilton & Co., Stoves, Tinware and Fishermen's Supplies," a mile or so up the main road. Young Ike—everybody called him "Ike," though his real name was Ichabod, same as his uncle's—was a pushin' critter, who'd come back from a Boston business college and had started right in to make the town sit up and take notice. He was goin' to get rich—he admitted that much—and he cal'lated to show us hayseeds a few things. Up to now he hadn't showed much but loud clothes and cheek, but he had enough of them to keep all hands interested for a spell.
His uncle, Ichabod, Senior, was a shrewd old rooster, with twenty thousand or so that, accordin' to his brags—he was always tellin' of it—he'd put away for a "rainy day." We have consider'ble damp weather at the Cape, but 'twould have taken a Noah's Ark flood to make Ichabod's purse strings loosen up. That twenty thousand dollars had growed fast to his nervous system and when you pulled away a cent he howled. Young Ike was the only one that could mesmerize this old man into spendin' anything, and how he did it nobody knew. But he did. Since he got into that Stoves and Tinware firm the store had been fixed up and advertisements put in the papers, and I don't know what all. The uncle had been under the weather with rheumatism for a year; maybe that explained a little.
Anyhow 'twas young Ike that picked himself to be postmaster instead of me and he and Phipps got the West-Enders, fifty or so of 'em, to sign a petition askin' that a new app'intment be made. I couldn't be removed except on charges, so a lot of charges was made. Fust, the post-office, bein' in the Ostable Grocery, Dry Goods, Boots and Shoes and Fancy Goods Store, was too far from the center of the town. Second, I was neglectin' the office and my assistant—Mary, that is—was really doin' the whole of the government work. There was some truth in this, because Mary knew a good deal more about mail work than I did, and was as capable a woman as ever lived; and besides, Jim Henry and I had been so busy with our store and the "Windmill Restaurant," and our other by-product ventures, that I had left Mary to run the post-office. But it was run better than any post-office ever was run afore in Ostable and everybody with brains knew it.
Third.... But never mind the rest of the charges, they didn't amount to anything. In fact, there was so little to 'em that when the West End petition went in to Washin'ton, I didn't take the trouble to send one of my own, though Jacobs thought I'd better and a hundred folks asked me to and said they'd sign. I just wrote to the Post-office Department and told them that I was ready to submit my case, if there was any need for it, and if they cared to send a representative to investigate, I'd be tickled to death to see him. They wrote back that they'd look into the matter, and that's the way it stood when Jim and Georgianna left and it stayed so until the lost letter affair run me bows fust onto the rocks and turned the situation from ridiculousness into something that looked likely to be mighty serious for me.