"It does," assented the Professor.
"There's Zed Jones," continued the Post Mistress, "with his new drag, his Queen Anne cottage built of gray stone, his Irish setters. And Mrs. Zed sending to Paris for all her clothes, and the little Zeds fine as fiddles with their ponies and their pony carts."
"And Hezekiah Smith," reminded the Professor.
"Who used to sleep on a pile of newspapers in his old newsstand on the corner, driving his tandem now. And Howard Evans and Roger Cranes and a dozen others, all poor as church mice then, and rich as cream now. It is like fairy land. You, too," with an admiring glance at the frock coat, "worth fifty thousand. And my bit of land bringing me a small fortune. I think after," with another smile in his direction, "we'll let some other lone single woman have this job who needs the money. We won't keep the Post Office any longer."
The Professor smiled a silent assent.
"But the most wonderful thing of all," went on the Post Mistress, "is that girl Cyclona. All of twenty-seven or eight, but she looks like a girl. It was pretty cute of her, wasn't it, to jump Seth's claim?"
"She didn't exactly jump it," said the Professor. "She was taking care of it after Seth went away, when her own topsy turvy house blew off somewhere. She had no other home. I wouldn't exactly call it jumping Seth's claim."
"Call it what you please," said the Post Mistress, "but it amounts to the same thing. She got all the money the Wise Men paid for the claim, and it went into the millions. Why, Seth's claim takes up the very heart of the city. That girl's worth her weight in gold, that Cyclona, and she deserves it, taking care of the baby first, then watching after Seth. I believe she's in love with Seth. I believe she lives in hopes that he'll come back again. I know. She is seen everywhere with Hugh Walsingham, drivin' with him in her stylish little trap, a good driver she is, too, after ridin' fiery bronchos, herdin' Seth's cattle and livin' wild-like on the prairies. She's a splendid whip, afraid of nothin'."
"But you can see in her big, stretchy faraway eyes that she ain't thinkin' about Hugh Walsingham, that she's always thinkin' about Seth and wishin' it was him a drivin' with her in that stylish little trap of hers."
She stopped to read a postal card.