In a Mysterious Way

"Oh, dear," said Lassie.

"You won't get any mail this morning," said Mary Cody; "there's a wreck on the road. Two coal trucks and a car of cabbages. There'll be no eastern mail till noon."

Then Mary Cody went away again.

"Isn't it strange that all this should happen just during the little time that we're here?" Lassie said; "it's made it very exciting."

Alva went on brushing her hair.

Lassie looked at her then, and saw that she bore many traces of her violent emotion of the night before.

"You won't try to go to-day, will you?" she said, suddenly.

"Oh, yes, I shall go." Then she turned and looked straight into the girl's eyes. "I must go," she said; "something has happened."

CHAPTER XXI

THE POST-OFFICE

From 8.30 A.M. on, the tide of travel in Ledge always tended towards the post-office, but on the famous morning when Mrs. Lathbun expected to hear from her lawyer, the post-office's vicinity resembled nothing so much as its own appearance upon Election Day. Every one that ever had received a letter intended to be there to see if Mrs. Lathbun would get hers. Long before train time not only the office itself, but the adjoining rooms and the porch outside, were comfortably crowded with a pleasantly anticipative collection of interested observers.

"The United States Government doesn't allow me to interfere in politics, or I'd come right square out with my views," said Mrs. Ray, who held public interest with a tight rein, while awaiting the mail. "My views may be uninteresting, but I hit enough nails on the head to box up a good many people a year."

"What do you think?" some one asked.

"I don't think anything," said Mrs. Ray; "I know!"

"Well, what do you know, then?"

"I know that a letter-getter stays a letter-getter, and the reverse the reverse. Just as I know that case-knives are suspicious and that picking chestnuts may be a bunco game as easy as anything else. I've found it nothing but a bunco game, myself. I've never made my chestnuts pay, just because they were so easy picked up by other people; and you can't hire boys to do your nutting for you, – boys eat up all the profits and most of the chestnuts into the bargain. Yes, indeed. And as for those two up at Nellie's – they'll get no letter. Wait and see."

"But what will happen to them then?" asked Joey Beall, aching to discuss the details of the arrest and the journey to Geneseo.

"I don't know, but I can tell you one piece of news, and it isn't gossip either; it come straight from Nellie O'Neil herself; she's been here this morning."

"Have they found out anything new?"

"Not about them; but her other two is leaving."

"What!"

"Yes, going this afternoon." Mrs. Ray folded her arms and leaned back against the shelves containing her grocery business.

The sensation caused by this extra and wholly unexpected bit of news was thorough and sincere. Everybody looked at everybody else.

Mrs. Dunstall pressed forward. "Haven't they paid, either?" she asked, with horror in her voice.

"Oh, yes, they've paid." Mrs. Ray was quickly reassuring on this point. "But with them, it's something else. I don't know for sure just what, but I guess that eldest one's beginning to see that it's no use as far as she's concerned; but she'll have to do something with that house she was fixing up to live in. Sarah Catt told me she never heard anything so crazy as building a house to live in while a dam that Mr. Ledge don't want built is being built. She says her husband says that dam never will be built. She says Mr. Ledge is very quiet, but he's very sensible and he says there's quicksands all under us."

This statement caused another flutter of sensation.

"Can't you dam a quicksand? I thought it run just like water." Thus Joey Beall's fiancée from the back.

"No, you can't," said Pinkie. "I know."

"I'd be sorry to see the dam go," said Mrs. Wiley. "Cousin Catterwallis Granger looked to see it raise all the property around here."

"Drown all the property around here, you mean," said Mrs. Ray. "I thank heaven it's the Dam Commission and not me who'll have to adjust all that dam's going to drown before it gets done. Josiah Bates says he heard that they'll have to take up all the cemeteries from here to Cromwell."

"Why?" asked Pinkie.

"Why? Why, because no matter what powers a commission can hold over the living, no legislature can find a law for drowning the dead, I guess. They've all got to be moved and set out in rows again in a new place. Seems like I never will see the last of Mr. Ray's two wives! But I shan't have to pay for their new start in life this time, anyway."

"Where will they put them next, do you suppose?" said Mrs. Dunstall, referring to the cemeteries – not to Mr. Ray's former wives.

"I guess we'll all want to know that," said Mrs. Ray, turning her head as if she heard the train (the tension in the room was increasing momentarily, – so was the crowd). "I'm sure I wonder what will become of Mr. Ray. I never could feel that I really was done with him, and now it seems maybe I ain't. I wish they'd buy my three-cornered cow pasture for a new cemetery. Then I could cut his grass when I went to milk my cow."

"The dam'll have to pay for the new cemeteries, won't it?" asked Lucia Cosby in some trepidation.

"The dam'll pay for everything. That's why every one wants it so bad," said Mrs. Ray.

"Yes, it is," said Pinkie.

"Which room have the Lathbuns got?" some one asked, looking down towards the O'Neil House.

"The end one," said Mrs. Dunstall.

"The curtains are down," said Nathan, elbowing his way to the window.

"They never get up till noon."

There was a hush, – sudden but intense. The train was approaching.

"Yes, that's the train," said Mrs. Ray; "well, we'll soon know now." She tucked her shawl tighter than ever, and got the key ready.

"Mrs. O'Neil'll be pretty lonesome to-night with them all gone at once," hazarded a bystander.

"She'll miss those girls," said Mrs. Dunstall; "they're real nice young ladies, she says. But she won't miss the Lathbuns."

"We'll miss the Lathbuns," said Mrs. Wiley; "they've been so interesting to talk about. We've even got Uncle Purchase to where he knows they live at Nellie's. I tell you that was work. He's so deaf now." She sighed.

"I guess it wasn't any worse than what the Bentons went through with Gran'ma Benton teaching the parrot when they lived at Nellie's," said Mrs. Ray. "Poor Clay Wright Benton was in here yesterday to see if I'd board Gran'ma Benton and the parrot again. He says Sarah says she won't come home till the parrot leaves, and he's most wild. Gran'ma Benton's been teaching the parrot to say something new. She says 'Where's the Lathbuns, Polly?' and the parrot says 'Out chestnutting,' only it won't say it days. It just says it nights. And nights it's wild over saying it. Last night no one in the house got one wink of sleep. Clay sit up till midnight to ask it where the Lathbuns was, and then Gran'ma Benton sit up and asked it where they was till morning. Poor Clay! He says it's too awful how she's spoiled that parrot. It's afraid of spiders, and it's so afraid of them at night that they have to keep a night-light burning so it can see all over whenever it wakes."

"Such doings!" said Mrs. Wiley, in disgust.

"Yes, indeed," said Mrs. Ray. "I'd like to see myself burning a night-light for a parrot. If it boards with me, it'll take its spiders just as they come."

"That's right," said Pinkie, with decision.