WHAT THE MEN SAID
I have elsewhere described the village post-office, both as it appeared at the time of Mr. Homer Hollopeter's election as postmaster and as later adorned and beautified by him.[1] It had been a labor of love with Mr. Homer, not only to make the office itself pleasant, to transform it, as he said, "into a fitting shrine for the genius of epistolary intercourse," but to make the outside of the building pleasant to the eye. Clematis and woodbine were trained up the walls and round the windows, and the once forlorn-looking veranda was a veritable bower of morning-glory and climbing roses.
On this veranda, the day after the reading of Mrs. Tree's will, the village elders were gathered, as was their custom, awaiting the arrival of the afternoon mail. They sat in a row, their chairs tilted back against the wall, their faces set seaward. The faces were all grave, and a certain solemnity seemed to brood over the little assembly. From time to time one or another would take his pipe from his mouth, and the others would look at him doubtfully, as if half-expecting a remark, but the pipe would be replaced in silence. At length Salem Rock, a massive gray-haired man of dignified and sober aspect, spoke.
"Well, boys," he said, "somebody's got to say something, and, as nobody else seems inclined, I s'pose it's up to me as the oldest here. Not but what I feel like a child to-day,—a little mite of a child. Boys, this village has met with a great loss."
There was a general murmur of "That's so!" "It has." "That's what it's met with!"
"I can't seem to sense it!" Salem Rock continued. "I can't seem to make it anyways real, that Mis' Tree is gone. I can't help but think that if I went there to that house to-day, as I was free to go any time I wanted anything as good advice could give—or help either—or anybody else in this village as ever needed anything—I can't help but think that if I went there to that house to-day I should find Mis' Tree sittin' in her chair, chirk as a chipmunk, and hear her say, 'Now, Salem Rock, what mischief have you been up to?' I was allus a boy to her—we was all boys."
"That's so!" the chorus murmured again. "That was what we was; boys!"
"And when I think," Salem Rock went on, "that I shall never more so go and so find her again—sittin' in that chair—nor hear her so speak—I tell you, boys, it breaks me all up; it doos so."
Again there was a sympathetic murmur; heads were shaken, and feet shuffled uneasily. The men were all glad to have a voice for their grief, but all had not the gift of speech.
"I remember"—Salem Rock was still the speaker; he was a slow, thoughtful man, and gathered momentum as he went on—"the first time ever I saw Mis' Tree, to remember it. I couldn't ha' been more than six years old, and I was sittin' in the front dooryard makin' mud pies, and she came in on some errand to mother. Mother used to spin yarn for her, same as my woman does now—did, I'm obleeged to say. Wal, she had on her grand bunnit and shawl, and I had never seen nothin' like her before. Ma'rm never took me to meetin' till I was seven, and she showed judgment. Wal, sirs, that ancient woman—she wasn't ancient then, of course, but yet she wasn't young, and she appeared ancient to me—looked me over, and spoke up sharp and crisp. 'Stand up, boy,' she says, 'and take your hat off; quick!'