“Sure as anything,” he said, taking the bulky looking letter out of its envelope and handing it to me.
“You’re elected to read it.” I unfolded it carefully. There were two letters, one enclosed in the other. The enclosed one I laid aside and started to read aloud the other, which was signed by Mrs. Boardman.
Coovers Falls, S. D.
Leatherstocking Training Camp,
P. O. Address, Harkness, Clinton County,
N. Y.
Dear Sirs:—
Received your letter. Also Mrs. Northrop brought me over two letters she had got from your camp. She can’t see to read anymore so I do all that for her.
I couldn’t understand the one letter she got at all (that’s the one I’ve enclosed), so I called in Sam Tibbets, our postmaster and he read it for us.
The reason I’m sending it back to you is because I understood from what you said in your letter that it wasn’t likely you knew anything about anyone else in your camp writing to Mrs. Northrop and that they must be doing it behind your back. It came about three days after yours, Mrs. Northrop says, and as I was over at Redlands helping my married daughter who ain’t feeling so well, why Mrs. Northrop had to wait till I got back.
Anyhow I guess you must know by now who wrote that last letter and also that young Peter Northrop is dead so we won’t have to give you any information that way.
Sam Tibbets said he felt right terrible when he had to read that out to Mrs. Northrop, but we was surprised to see how calm like she heard the whole thing. All she said was she was so old it didn’t make much difference and it wouldn’t be long anyhow before she’d be with young Peter.
But what I wanted to say was that Mrs. Northrop wants me to tell you to thank whoever sent that last letter about her son (there was no name signed as you’ll see) also the reason I sent it back is because you’ll probably know the handwriting.
As I said before, she wants you to thank the party and also for the money that came in it. Sam says it was a dangerous thing to do to send a pile of money like that through the mail and only register it for twenty-five cents. I say so too. But it will help Mrs. Northrop right comfortable for the few years she has to live and she’s thankful to have it. She was very poor and it is a fortune to her. I wouldn’t mind having it myself, but of course not to lose my children to have it.
I guess that’s all except Mrs. Northrop said to say young Peter never had a scar on either of his feet that she knew.
Thanking you for your trouble and all,
Yours truly,
(Signed) Mrs. Katie Boardman.
When I had finished, Brent was still standing with the dust cloth in his hand and Tom was sitting on the edge of the table swinging his legs.
“What else?” said Tom, the first to break the silence.
I had taken up the enclosed letter and was trying to decipher that outlandish writing. One could see at a glance it had been written under great stress. It looked like the Chinese alphabet to me so I handed it over to Tom. He scrutinized it carefully.
“Why hand it to me?” said Tom. “This crossword puzzle stuff is right in Brent’s line. He’ll make it out somehow.” Tom took the dust cloth out of Brent’s limp hand, shoved him down in the rocker and pulled both over to the window.
“While you’re about it, Tom,” Brent said, leisurely, “you might get me a clean handkerchief out of the top pocket in my coat, hanging on the rack. I’ll have to wipe the dust off my glasses.” After Brent had attended to all these preliminaries, he studied the letter through twice. We kept a respectful silence meanwhile, but I’ll own I was impatient for him to say something. Finally his sober features broke into a puzzled look, that was half frown and half smile.
“To begin with,” Brent said, “the paper this is written on is the same stuff we had stuck up in the cupboard. Remember the stuff we bought in Harkness that one time and couldn’t use because the weave was so coarse the pen point would catch in it and blur?”
So we had. We’d used it all with the exception of a few sheets and had thrust those carelessly in the cupboard after we had gotten more of a better grade.