CHAPTER XIII.[ToC]
The Post Mistress at the station tapped her thimble on the window-pane at the chickens floundering in the flower-bed outside.
They turned, looked at her, then, rising, staggered off with a ruffled and uppish air, due partly to their indignation and partly to the fact that the wind blew their feathers straight up, and a trifle forward over their heads.
"It's bad enough," she said, "to try and raise flowers in Kansas, fighting the wind, without having to fight the chickens. It's a fight for existence all the way round, this living in Kansas."
Her companion was a man with iron-gray hair, a professor of an Eastern college who had come West, planted what money he had in real estate and lost it. He, however, still retained part of the real estate.
He frequently lounged about the office for an hour or two during the day, waiting for the mail, good enough company except that he occasionally interfered with the reading of the postal cards.