Treat you like a man! Do you suppose if you were a man I should-"

That was the last word I heard. I was bound for the front platform, and makin' some headway for a craft of my age and build. I have got some sense and I know when three's a crowd!

I didn't go back until they called me. I give the pair of 'em one look and then I shook hands with 'em up to the elbows. Georgianna was blushin', and her eyes were damp, but shinin' like masthead lights on a rainy night. As for Jim Henry Jacobs, he was one broad grin.

"Well," says I, after I'd said all the joyful things I could think of, "one point ain't settled even yet-who's goin' to get that screen contract? There ain't any love in business, you know."

"Humph!" says Jim Henry. "I wonder!"

I laughed out loud.

"Why," says I, "that's exactly what Georgianna here said t'other day-she wondered!"

CHAPTER XIV-THE EPISTLE TO ICHABOD

Mary came in a few minutes later and she had to be told the news. She was as pleased as I was and there was more congratulatin'. Then Georgianna had to go home and, as she was altogether too precious to be allowed to walk, Jim Henry went and got his auto and they left in that.

When he got back-that car must have been sufferin' from a stroke of creepin' paralysis, for it took him two hours to run that little distance-he and I had a good confidential talk. He was way up above this common earth, soarin' around in the clouds, and all he wanted to talk was Georgianna. The whole of creation had been set to music and was dancin' to the one tune-"Georgianna."

It was astonishin' to me who had been in the habit of considerin' him just a sharp, up-to-date buyer and seller, a man whose whole soul was wrapped up in business with no room in it for anything else. I found myself lookin' at him and wonderin': "Is the world comin' to an end, I wonder? Is this my partner? Is this moon-struck critter Jim Henry Jacobs, doctor of sick businesses?"

I couldn't help jokin' him a little.

"Jim," says I, "for a feller who hadn't any use for females you're doin'

pretty well, I must say. Either you was mistaken in your old opinions or your new ones are wrong. Which is it? 'Women and business don't mix,'

you know. That ain't an original notion; that is quoted from the Gospel according to Jacobs, Chapter 1,000; two hundred and eightieth verse."

He reddened up and laughed. "Well, they _don't_ mix, as a general thing," he says. "I guess 'twas Georgianna's sand in goin' into business that got me in the first place. I leave it to you, Skipper-ain't she a wonder? Now be honest, ain't she?"

Course I said she was; I have the usual sane man's regard for my head and I didn't want it knocked off yet awhile. And Georgianna _was_ as nice a girl as I ever saw-that is, _almost_ as nice. Jim went sailin'

on, about how now he could settle down and live like a white man in a home of his own, about the house he was goin' to build, and so forth and etcetery. I declare it made me feel almost jealous to hear him.

"My! my!" says I, kind of spiteful, I'm afraid, "you have got it bad, ain't you! Sudden attacks are liable to be the most acute, I suppose."

He laughed again. You couldn't have made him mad just then.

"Ha, ha!" says he. "Yes, I guess I'm way past where there's any hope for me. But I'm glad of it. It did come sudden, but that's the way most good things come to me. It's my nature. Now if I was like some folks that I won't name, I'd be mopin' around for months without sense enough to know what ailed me."

"Who are you diggin' at?" I wanted to know. He wouldn't tell; said 'twas a secret, and maybe I'd find out the answer for myself some day.

The next few weeks was busy times, in the store and out of it.

Georgianna havin' declined the screen contract, Parkinson gave it to us, after a little arguin'. That kept me hustlin', for Jim was too interested in other things to care for screens. He was making arrangements to be married.

And married he and Georgianna were. She'd have waited a little longer, I cal'late-that bein' a woman's way-if it had been left to her to name the time; but Jim Henry never was the waitin' kind. They were married at the parson's and Mary Blaisdell and I saw the splice made fast. Then we went to the depot and said good-by to Mr. and Mrs. Jim Henry Jacobs. They were goin' on a honeymoon cruise to the West Indies that would last two months.

Good-byes ain't ever pleasant to say, but I was so glad for Jim, and so happy because he was, that I tried to be as chipper as I could.

"If you need me, wire at Havana, Skipper," he says. "I'll come the minute you say the word."

"I sha'n't need you," I told him. "Mary and I'll run things as well as we can. She makes a good fust mate, Mary does."

"You bet!" says he. "I feel a little conscience-struck to leave you just now, with that West End crowd tryin' to make trouble for you, but Congressman Shelton is your friend and he'll look out for you in Washin'ton."

"Don't you worry about that," I says. "I ain't scared of Bill Phipps or Ike Hamilton-much, or any of their West End crew. The decent folks in town are on my side, and with Shelton to back me up at Washin'ton, I cal'late I'll keep my job till you come back anyhow."

The train started and Mary and I waved till 'twas out of sight. Then we went back to the store. I give in that the old feelin', the feelin' that I'd had when Jim was sick out West, that of bein' adrift without an anchor, was hangin' around me a little, but I braced up and vowed to myself that I'd do the best I could. If this post-office row did get dangerous, I might telegraph for Jacobs, but I wouldn't till the ship was founderin'.

I suppose you can always get up an opposition party. There was one amongst the Children of Israel in Moses's time, and there's been plenty ever since. So long as somebody has got somethin' there'll always be somebody else to want to get it away from him. That's human nature, and there's as much human nature in Ostable, size considered, as there was in the Land of Canaan.

I'd been postmaster at Ostable for quite a spell. I didn't try for the position, I was mad when 'twas given to me, there wa'n't much of anything in it but a lot of fuss and trouble, and I'd said forty times over that I wished I didn't have it. But when the gang up at the West End of the town set out to take it away from me I r'ared up on my hind legs and swore I'd fight for my job till the last plank sunk from under me. Don't sound like sense, does it? It wa'n't-'twas just more human nature.

Course the opposition wa'n't large and 'twa'n't very influential. Old man William Phipps and young Ike Hamilton was at the head of it, and they had forty or fifty West-Enders to back 'em up. Phipps had been one of the leading workers for Abubus Payne, the chap I beat for the app'intment in the fust place; and young Hamilton was junior partner in the firm of "Ichabod Hamilton & Co., Stoves, Tinware and Fishermen's Supplies," a mile or so up the main road. Young Ike-everybody called him "Ike," though his real name was Ichabod, same as his uncle's-was a pushin' critter, who'd come back from a Boston business college and had started right in to make the town sit up and take notice. He was goin'

to get rich-he admitted that much-and he cal'lated to show us hayseeds a few things. Up to now he hadn't showed much but loud clothes and cheek, but he had enough of them to keep all hands interested for a spell.

His uncle, Ichabod, Senior, was a shrewd old rooster, with twenty thousand or so that, accordin' to his brags-he was always tellin' of it-he'd put away for a "rainy day." We have consider'ble damp weather at the Cape, but 'twould have taken a Noah's Ark flood to make Ichabod's purse strings loosen up. That twenty thousand dollars had growed fast to his nervous system and when you pulled away a cent he howled. Young Ike was the only one that could mesmerize this old man into spendin'

anything, and how he did it n.o.body knew. But he did. Since he got into that Stoves and Tinware firm the store had been fixed up and advertis.e.m.e.nts put in the papers, and I don't know what all. The uncle had been under the weather with rheumatism for a year; maybe that explained a little.

Anyhow 'twas young Ike that picked himself to be postmaster instead of me and he and Phipps got the West-Enders, fifty or so of 'em, to sign a pet.i.tion askin' that a new app'intment be made. I couldn't be removed except on charges, so a lot of charges was made. Fust, the post-office, bein' in the Ostable Grocery, Dry Goods, Boots and Shoes and Fancy Goods Store, was too far from the center of the town. Second, I was neglectin'

the office and my a.s.sistant-Mary, that is-was really doin' the whole of the government work. There was some truth in this, because Mary knew a good deal more about mail work than I did, and was as capable a woman as ever lived; and besides, Jim Henry and I had been so busy with our store and the "Windmill Restaurant," and our other by-product ventures, that I _had_ left Mary to run the post-office. But it was run better than any post-office ever was run afore in Ostable and everybody with brains knew it.

Third.... But never mind the rest of the charges, they didn't amount to anything. In fact, there was so little to 'em that when the West End pet.i.tion went in to Washin'ton, I didn't take the trouble to send one of my own, though Jacobs thought I'd better and a hundred folks asked me to and said they'd sign. I just wrote to the Post-office Department and told them that I was ready to submit my case, if there was any need for it, and if they cared to send a representative to investigate, I'd be tickled to death to see him. They wrote back that they'd look into the matter, and that's the way it stood when Jim and Georgianna left and it stayed so until the lost letter affair run me bows fust onto the rocks and turned the situation from ridiculousness into something that looked likely to be mighty serious for me.

It come about-same as such jolts generally come-when I was least ready for it. Jim Henry had been gone three weeks or more. 'Twas February and none of my influential friends amongst the summer folks was on hand to help. No, Mary and I were all alone and sailin' free with what looked like a fair wind, when "b.u.mp!"-all at once our craft was half full of water and sinkin' fast.

That mornin' the mail was a little mite late and there wa'n't any store trade to speak of. Mary was in the post-office place writin', the usual gang of loafers was settin' around the stove, and I was out front talkin' with Sim Kelley, who lived up to the west end of the town, amongst the mutineers. 'Twas from Sim that I got most of my news about the doin's of the Phipps and Hamilton crowd. He was a great, hulkin', cross-eyed lubber, too lazy to get out of his own way, and as shif'less as a body could be and take pains enough to live.

"Sim," says I to him, "I thought you said old man Hamilton was in bed with his rheumatiz. I saw him up street as I was comin' by. He looked pretty feeble, but he was toddlin' along on foot just as he always does.

Rheumatic or not, it's all the same. I cal'late the old critter wouldn't spend enough money to hire a team if he was dyin'."

Sim was surprised, and not only surprised, but, seemingly, a little mite worried. Why he should be worried because Ichabod was takin' chances with his diseases I couldn't see.

"Old man Hamilton!" says he. "Is he out a cold mornin' like this? Where was he bound?"

"Don't know," says I. "He stopped into the drug store when I saw him.

Whether that was his final port of call or not I don't know."

He seemed to be thinkin' it over. Then he got up and walked to the door.

"He ain't in sight nowheres," he says. "Guess he wa'n't comin' as far as here, 'tain't likely."

"Well," says I, "how's the rest of the family? The hopeful leader of the forlorn hope-how's he?"

"Ike?" he says. "Oh, he's all right. He's a mighty smart young feller, Ike is."

"Yes," says I, "so I've heard him say. Gettin' ready to stand in with him when he gets my job, are you, Sim?"