’Twas her fancy: I might indulge it.
“I ’low, Dannie,” says she, “that he was a wonderful handsome man, though I never seed un. God’s sake!” cries she, defiantly, “he’d be hard t’ beat for looks in this here harbor.” She was positive; there was no uncertainty––’twas as though she had known him as fathers are known. And ’twas by no wish of mine, now, that our hands came close together, that her eyes were bent without reserve upon my own, that she snuggled up to my great, boyish body: ’twas wholly a wish of the maid. “’Twas blue eyes he had,” says she, “an’ yellow hair an’ big shoulders. He was a parson, Dannie,” she proceeded. “I ’low he must have been. He––he––was!” she declared; “he was a great, big parson with blue eyes.” I would not be a parson, thinks I, whatever the maid might wish. “An’ he ’lowed,” she continued, pursuing her wilful fancy, “that he’d come back, some day, an’ love my mother as she knowed he could.” We watched Moses Shoos come across the harbor ice and break open the door of the postmaster’s cottage. “But he was wrecked an’ drowned,” says Judith, “an’ ’twas an end of my mother’s hope. ’Twas on’y that,” says she, “that she would tell Skipper 223 Nicholas on the night she died. ’Twas just the wish that he would bring me up, as he’ve fetched up you, Dannie,” she added: “jus’ that––an’ the name o’ my father. I’m not sorry,” says she, with her head on my shoulder, “that she never told the name.”
Elizabeth carried her secret into the greater mystery to which she passed; ’twas never known to us, nor to any one....
“Moses,” says I, in delight, when the news got abroad, “I hears you got the contract for the mail?”
“I is,” says he.
“An’ how in the name o’ Heaven,” I demanded, “did you manage so great a thing?”
There had been competition, I knew: there had been consideration and consultation––there had been the philosophy of the aged concerning the carrying of mail in past years, the saucy anarchy of the young with regard to the gruelling service, the chatter of wishful women upon the spending value of the return, the speculatively saccharine brooding of children––there had been much sage prophecy and infinitely knowing advice––there had been misleading and secrecy and sly devising––there had been envy, bickering, disruption of friendship––there had been a lavish waste and disregard of character––there had been all this, as I knew, and more pitiable still, in competition for the weekly four dollars of government money. ’Twas a most marvellous achievement, thinks I, that the fool of Twist Tickle had from this still weather of reason and tempest of feeling 224 emerged with the laurel of wisdom (as my tutor said) to crown him. ’Twas fair hard to credit! I must know the device––the clever political trick––by which the wags and wiseacres of Twist Tickle had been discomfited. ’Twas with this hungry curiosity that I demanded of the fool of Twist Tickle how he had managed so great a thing.
“Eh, Moses,” says I; “how was it?”
“Dannie,” he gravely explained, “’tis very simple. My bid,” says he, impressively, “was the lowest.”