Poppea of the Post-Office

by Mabel Osgood Wright

And reading from what she did not say rather than from what she did, Hugh sighed and then quickened their pace, wondering what would be the end of it all for both of them.

That night, or rather morning, the fire signal was given by one of the factories on the Westboro road, to be repeated the next moment by the whistle of the Owl Express due to pass at three, and which halted presently, tolling its bell dismally. Instantly the male portion of the village was in its boots and trousers and running toward the red light at the north horizon. This was soon found to come from the railroad station at Harley's Mills. 'Lisha Potts, who had arrived at the post-office house with his team the previous evening to take his wife home the next day, was among the first to reach the building which had been set on fire at one end of the roof, presumably by a passing train.

Breaking into the ticket-office to haul out a small safe, and such express packages as had not been delivered, was the work of a few moments, while some energetic villagers, with more vigor than discretion, rushed into the attic and threw from the dormers a lot of old lanterns, boxes, broken bits of furniture, and like rubbish already partly on fire, that had been accumulating there ever since the station was built and antedating the checking system. The lanterns, of course, were shivered to atoms in transit, while the other smouldering stuff was promptly seized by the crowd below and dumped into the little brook that ran along the north side of the track.

After these efforts, no attempt was made to save the building, for there was no water-supply, or fire company other than a bucket-brigade, which was ineffectual against the keen spring wind that was scattering the brands over the thirsty old shingles. The burning station furnished an hour's spectacle both for the villagers and the passengers on the Owl Express which, being on the near track, had to wait; then shrivelled into a cellar full of ashes crossed by a few charred beams, the fire of which was soon changed to harmless smoke by the efforts of the bucket-brigade. The express ceased its tooting, gave one long and two short whistles, and proceeded on its way; while after the safe and miscellaneous contents of the express office had been transferred to the freight-house, the throng turned homeward to snatch a little sleep in the couple of hours that remained before the working day began.

'Lisha Potts was so thoroughly awake that it did not seem to him worth while to go to bed again, especially as he wished to make an early start for home. Satira, having also been to the fire, was in a bustling mood, so she prepared some of her famous coffee, and the pair sat down to a four o'clock pick-up breakfast in the kitchen of the post-office house, with many cautions of silence interspersed with little jokes and much chuckling that belonged to a young couple on the verge of eloping rather than to people of sedate years who were about to take up housekeeping once more after a winter of partial separation.

Presently 'Lisha stood in the doorway facing the east, watching the sky redden until the climax was reached in the coming up of the sun over Moosatuck, while the swifts wheeling in and out of the stone chimney behind him were making mimic thunder. He was undecided whether to begin at once the grooming of his horses or take a stroll along the lane that indirectly joined the two main roads and get a sniff of the mist-laden morning air so necessary to those whose life has been of the open.

Choosing the latter, he had gone but a dozen rods when he met the station-master, who had come across lots with the direct intention of hunting him out. It seemed that the mass of smouldering débris cast from the attic into the brook had bunched together and formed an impromptu dam, to the extent that the little stream, unusually lusty from the spring rains, had been diverted from its course to the switch track, where it was now busily washing the ballast from between the ties. The station-master's errand was to see if 'Lisha would hook up and cart the stuff about half a mile farther down the road to where a bottomless bog-hole conveniently consumed the refuse of the community.

Armed with a potato-digger by way of a weapon, 'Lisha was soon loading the sodden stuff into his long wagon, which he chanced to be driving the night before, when he had come direct from the lumber camp to the post-office house.

"Do you reckon there's any of this old stuff that's any good to dry out?" he asked the station-master, who was standing on the switch track on the lookout for the milk train.

"Nope; there's no company property amongst it, only a lot of odds and ends that's been up there since old Binks's day, and his widder didn't see value in to move. That little cow-skin trunk I've never seen before; it must have lain away in the dark pit behind the chimney; it might have been a sort of a curiosity if it hadn't been scorched and bulged, but as it is, better dump the whole lot and done with it."