“Tain’t the law, is it?” Joshua Hicks inquired.
“You better be gone, Joshua,” she said. “No, it ain’t the law–it’s–it’s something else. It ain’t the law, Joshua.”
“Is it any trouble?” he asked.
She answered, strangely agitated, “No, ’tain’t no trouble, Joshua.”
“They ain’t a goin’ to stop sendin’ you your pension?”
“Not as I know of, Joshua, but jes’ I want to be alone. It ain’t no trouble of money, Joshua, not this time....”
If it were no matter of money, then Joshua Hicks could not conjecture what in the world it was, for there were only two things in old Mrs. Haskell’s life, and these were both concerned with money. One was the monthly receipt of her pension, for in her small way she had helped to make the world safe for democracy and all that sort of thing. The other was the mortgage and interest on her little home which the pension could not begin to take care of. Mrs. Haskell did not understand about this mortgage at all, but the most important part of it she did understand, and that was that pretty soon she was going to be put out. She did not have to be a financier or a lawyer to understand that. She had tried to beat this mortgage back by sewing and gardening and selling eggs, but the interest had grown faster than the potatoes, the pen was mightier than the needle and the mortgage had kept right on working while the chickens had taken a vacation.
The mortgage had beaten poor old Mrs. Haskell at every turn. It had bombarded her with notices and writs and summonses and things and she had lost the fight. She had a sort of armistice with this mortgage, but she knew there could be but one end to that armistice. The little war, a very heroic little war, was as good as over. The little white house had been made safe for the Liberty Realty Company.
For one brief, terrible moment, before the postmaster had departed, Mrs. Haskell had feared that perhaps she had done something lawless in connection with her little pension, signed her name in the wrong place perhaps, and that W. Harris with all his high sounding names, was some doughty governmental minion coming to apprehend her in true military fashion. But if the paper contained in the envelope dispelled that fear, at least it did not cheer her.
She returned into the house, her eyes brimming, the paper shaking in her poor old hand. She groped her way to an old haircloth armchair in her sitting room, and put on her spectacles. The moisture from her eyes dimmed the glasses and she had to take them off and wipe them before beginning to read.