“He's saying there is no Uncle Joe.”
“No Uncle Joe?” cried Pete, lifting voice and eyebrows together.
The postman signified assent with a nod of his peak.
“Well, that's rich,” said Pete, in a low breath, raising his face as if to invoke the astonishment of the sky itself. “No Uncle Joe?” he repeated, in a tone of blank incredulity. “Ask the man if it's in bed he is. Why,” and Pete's eyes opened and closed like a doll's, “he'll be saying there's no Auntie Joney next.”
The postman looked up inquiringly.
“Never heard of Auntie Joney—Uncle Joe's wife? No? Well, really, really—is it sleeping I am? Not Auntie Joney, the Primitive? Aw, a good ould woman as ever lived. A saint, if ever the like was in, and died a triumphant death, too. No theaytres for her, though. She won't bemane herself. No, but she's going to chapel reg'lar, and getting up in the middle of every night of life to say her prayers. 'Deed she is. So Black Tom says there is no Uncle Joe?”
Pete gave a long whistle, then stopped it sudden with his mouth agape, and said from his throat, “I see.”
He put his mouth close to the postman's ear and whispered, “Ever hear Black Tom talk of the fortune he's expecting through the Coort of Chancery?” The postman's peak bobbed downwards. “You have? Tom's thinking to grab it all for himself. Ha, ha! That's it! Ha, ha!”
The postman went off blinking and giggling, and Pete reeled up the path, biting his lip, and muttering, “Keep it up, Pete, keep it up—it's ploughing a hard furrow, though.” Then aloud, “A letter from the mistress, Nancy.”
Nancy met him in the porch, clearing her fingers, thick with dough.