Sez I, “I wanted you to know jest what reason she had for bein’ so mad and writin’ it, for I knowed you wouldn’t feel so mortified about it.  The way on’t wuz, she wuz in the Office, and hadn’t baked that week owin’ to the cat tippin’ over her yeast, she’s so petickular she won’t use boughten, and a hull load of company driv up onexpected at leven forty-five.  The baker come and not havin’ a cent of change by her, and he refusin’ to trust her jest out of meanness, she knowin’ she wuz to have some money paid her in the mornin’, jest borrowed five cents from Uncle Sam.  I don’t say it wuz right, she’d better made biscuit, but I say she wuz punished pretty hash for that and two other small things, for bein’ half distracted by her cares, she forgot to cancel three letters, the first mistake she’d made in the three years she’d been in office.  One wuz a drop letter, so Uncle Sam wuz only out five cents.  Well, you know Theodore, that when trials come, they come as Shakespeare said, ’Not as single spiders but hull battles on ’em,’ or words to that effect.

“Right on top of that Baker come the Inspector.  He discovered the deficit of ten cents, and also that other incident, where I got mixed up in the Jonesville P.O.  Scandal.  Keturah had to have help in the office once in awhile, and two men wanted to work for her, Nate Yerden and Sam Pendergrast.  She didn’t like Nate, and she did like Sam, and I don’t spoze it made much difference in her feelin’s, but Sam kep’ sheep and did gin her yarn for a pair of stockin’s, and jest out of pure kindness I colored it for her in my indigo dye tub.

“I never thought of committin’ any sin, let alone one with such a big name, Misprision of Treason and Maladministration of Justice, I believe he called it.  Why, for a spell I thought I should have to be shot up, Josiah wuz skairt to death, and told him he never hearn of such crimes, and sez he, ’I’ll bet you can’t find ’em in the Velosipeder.’

“He meant the Encyclepeder, but poor man he wuz most crazy.  I emptied out my blue dye and don’t know as I shall ever set up another.  And Keturah raveled out her stockin’s and gin back the yarn, I got off with the awfulest talkin’ to I ever had, and warnin’s never, never to trifle in such a heedless and wicked way with Public Matters and the sacred rights of the people.  But Keturah, poor thing! wuz jest turned right out of office root and branch.  She knowed what high influence duz in politics, and she got Thomas Jefferson to argy with the Inspector and tell him jest how it wuz.  But he said the dignity of a great Nation wuz at stake and out she must go.

“Keturah wep’ and cried, and reminded him the yarn wuz gin back and how small the sum wuz.  And he said, ’A straw showed which way the wind blowed, and the Nation must trust its public servants implicitly, or where would be the safety of the people.’