FullReads

I steeled my heart after supper with proud resolve that if the night turned out to be as protracted as one of those Lapland winter nights we read about in geography, I still would not surrender.

The boys outside were not so excited over the tidings of my unlooked-for victory as I had expected them to be. They received the news, in fact, with a rather mortifying stoicism. Tom Hemingway, however, took enough interest in the affair to suggest that, instead of spending my twenty cents in paltry fire-crackers, I might go downtown and buy another can of powder for his cannon. By doing so, he pointed out, I would be a part-proprietor, as it were, of the night’s performance, and would be entitled to occasionally touch the cannon off. This generosity affected me, and I hastened down the long hill-street to show myself worthy of it, repeating the instruction of “Kentucky Bear-Hunter-coarse-grain” over and over again to myself as I went.

Half-way on my journey I overtook a person whom, even in the gathering twilight, I recognized as Miss Stratford, the school-teacher. She also was walking down the hill and rapidly. It did not need the sight of a letter in her hand to tell me that she was going to the post-office. In those cruel war-days everybody went to the post-office. I myself went regularly to get our mail, and to exchange shin-plasters for one-cent stamps with which to buy yeast and other commodities that called for minute fractional currency.

Although I was very fond of Miss Stratford—I still recall her gentle eyes, and pretty, rounded, dark face, in its frame of long, black curls, with tender liking—I now coldly resolved to hurry past, pretending not to know her. It was a mean thing to do; Miss Stratford had always been good to me, shining in that respect in brilliant contrast to my other teachers, whom I hated bitterly. Still, the “Kentucky Bear-Hunter-coarse-grain” was too important a matter to wait upon any mere female friendship, and I quickened my pace into a trot, hoping to scurry by unrecognized.

“Oh, Andrew! is that you?” I heard her call out as I ran past. For an instant I thought of rushing on, quite as if I had not heard. Then I stopped and walked beside her.

“I am going to stay up all night: my mother says I may; and I am going to fire off Tom Hemingway’s cannon every fourth time, straight through till breakfast time,” I announced to her loftily.

“Dear me! I ought to be proud to be seen walking with such and important citizen,” she answered, with kindly playfulness. She added more gravely, after a moment’s pause: “Then Tom is out playing with the other boys, is he?”

“Why, of course!” I responded.”He always lets us stand around when he fires off his cannon. He’s got some ‘ringers’ this year too.”

I heard Miss Stratford murmur and impulsive “Thank God!” under her breath.

Full as the day had been of surprises, I could not help wondering that the fact of Tom’s ringers should stir up such profound emotions in the teacher’s breast. Since the subject so interested her, I went on with a long catalogue of Tom’s other pyrotechnic possessions, and from that to an account of his almost supernatural collection of postage-stamps. In a few minutes more I am sure I should have revealed to her the great secret of my life, which was my determination, in case I came to assume the victorious role and rank of Napoleon, to immediately make Tom a Marshall of the Empire.

But we had reached the post-office square. I had never before seen it so full of people.