FullReads

When the new school building was finished–a brick structure with stone trimmings, steam-heated, and varnished desks and seats–the craze for the new and up-to-date so dominated the board that they paid Abbie a month’s salary in advance and then replaced her with a man graduate from Concord. Abbie took her dismissal as a matter of course. Nothing good ever lasted long. When she went up one step she always slid back two. It had been that way all her life.

Hiram heard of it and came rattling into the village, where he expressed himself at a town meeting in language distinguished for its clearness and force. The result was Abbie’s application for the position of postmistress.

This time he didn’t consult the trustees or anybody else. He wrote a private note to the Postmaster-General, who was his friend, and the appointment came by return mail.

Mr. Taylor would often chat with her through the little window with which she held converse with the public–he often came himself for his mail–but she made no mention of her state of mind. She was earning her living, and she was for the time content. He had helped her and she was grateful–more than this it was not her habit to dwell upon. One thing she was convinced of: she wouldn’t keep the position long.

Her mother knew her misgivings, and so did a small open wood fire in the sitting-room. Many a night the two would croon together. The mother shrivelled and faded; Abbie herself being over thirty–not so fresh-looking as she had been–not so pretty–never had been very pretty. Her mother knew, too, how hard she had always struggled to do something better; how she had studied drawing at the normal school when she was preparing to be a teacher; and how she had spent weeks in the elaboration of wall-paper patterns, which she had sent to the Decorative Art Society in Boston, only to have them returned to her in the same wrapper in which they had been mailed, with the indorsement “not suitable.” That’s why she didn’t think she was going to be postmistress long. Far into the night these talks would continue-long after the other neighbors had gone to bed–nine o’clock maybe–sometimes as late as ten–an unheard-of thing in Taylorsville, where everybody was up at daylight.

Then one day an extraordinary thing happened–extraordinary so far as her modest post-office was concerned. A poster appeared on the wall of her office–a huge card, big as the top of a school desk, bearing in large type this legend: “Rock Creek Copper Company. Keep & Co., Agents,” and at the bottom, in small type, directions as to the best way of securing the stock before the lists were closed. She had noticed the name of the company emblazoned on many of the communications addressed to people in the village–the richer ones–but here it was in cold type–“hot type,” for that matter, for it was in flaming red–on the wall, in front of her window.

Abbie lifted her head in surprise when she saw what had been done without even “By your leave.” She had found auction sales, sheriff’s notices and tax warnings opposite her window, but never copper mines. The longer she looked at it the better she liked it. There was a cheery bit of color in its blazing letters, and she was partial to bits of color. That’s why she kept plants all winter in the little sitting-room at home, and nursed one cactus that gave out a scarlet bloom once in so many months.

It was Miss Maria Furgusson, of Boston–summer boarder at the next cottage; second floor, six dollars a week, including washing–that revived, kept alive, in fact, fanned to fever heat, Abbie’s first impression of the poster. Maria called for her mail, and the intimacy had gone so far that before the week was out “Miss Todd” had been replaced by “Abbie” and then “Ab,” and Miss Furgusson by “Maria”–the postmistress being too dignified for further abbreviation.