“It wears on you to keep track of my correspondence, don’t it?” affirmed the girl, taking her letters and rending them open with impatient forefinger. They were all addressed, in the same mercantile hand, to Miss Beatrice Jenkins, Wabash Station, Illinois. She compared the dates of the postmarks, and opened the earliest, standing by the door to read.
The smoke-dimmed interior of the store was hung with baskets, dry-goods, bacon, ready-made clothing, and boots and shoes. A skeleton flight of steps ascended across a background of wall to the proprietor’s residence, and up this flight of steps went a neighbor’s barefooted child with a coffee-pot to borrow some household necessity, while Beetrus read her mail.
She was a spot of mellow color betwixt brilliant autumn tints outside and the dim inclosure. The slim, long-fingered hands holding her letters were nicely gloved. Her white hat was covered with plumes just owning the salmon-pink tint of her small woolen shawl. Her dress was neutral and unobtrusive. Not so, however, were her black eyes and glowing cheeks, or the dark hair clustering to her ears. She was a very pretty girl, and this the station-master always mentally admitted. He came out of his post-office cubby with the mail-bag in his hand.
“So you’re going to clear out to-day, Bee?”
She glanced up, perceptibly starting and coloring.
“Goin’ by rail or by river?”
“Oh!” said Beetrus. “Yes, we’re going up the river. Our things are packed on the White Dove. We’d have to go so far around and pay so much freight the other way. But I don’t like to go on a freight boat, and neither does ma, though the men are just as kind and clever as they can be. We have to sit upon deck all night, too, among the machinery and grease.”
“Yes, you will. It’s a twelve hours’ run betwixt this and New Harmony against the current. The White Dove starts about three o’clock. Will you be down any during the winter?”
“I guess not. Our man and his wife can tend to everything on the farm. We never do run back and forth any after cold weather sets in.”
“And I suppose you’ll put the time in dancin’ and takin’ music lessons?”