“She’s a flatterer,” cried Mary.

“I am beginning to love her myself,” said I.  “But listen to Tim.  ’She told me she hoped to see Black Log some day, and to meet the soldier of the valley.  I said that I hoped she would, too, but I didn’t tell her that a hundred times a day, as I worked over the books in the office, I vowed that soon I’d take her there myself.’”

“As Mrs. Tim,” Mary added, for I was folding up the letter.

“As Mrs. Tim, evidently,” said I.  “Poor old Tim!  It’s a very bad case.”

“Poor old Tim!” said Mary.

She took up her needles and her work, and fell to knitting.

“I suppose they must be very rich—­the Parkers, I mean.”  This was offered as a wedge to break the silence, for the needles were going very rapidly now, and the stitches seemed to call for the closest watching.

“Yes,” said Mary.

I lighted my pipe again.

“What a grand man Tim will be when he comes back home.”  I suggested this after a long silence.  “He’ll look fine in his city clothes, for somehow those city men do dress differently from us country chaps.  Now just picture Tim in a—­in a——­”

Mary was humming softly to herself.

XI

The county paper always comes on Thursday.  This was Thursday.  Elmer Spiker sat behind the stove, in a secluded corner, the light of the lamp on the counter falling over his left shoulder on the leading column of locals.  Elmer was reading.  There was a store rule forbidding him to read aloud, which caused him much hardship, for as he worked his way slowly down the column, his right eye and left ear kept twitching and twitching as though trying to keep time with his lips.

Josiah Nummler’s long pole rested on the counter at his side, and his great red hands were spread out to drink in the heat from the glowing bowl of the stove.

“It’s a-blowin’ up most a-mighty, ain’t it?” he said, cheerfully.  “Any news, Elmer?”

“Oh now, go home,” grunted Mr. Spiker, rolling his pipe around so the burning tobacco scattered over his knees.  “See what you’ve done!” he snapped angrily, brushing away the sparks.

“I didn’t notice you was in the middle of a word, Elmer, really I didn’t,” pleaded old Mr. Nummler.

“I wasn’t in the middle of a word,” retorted Elmer, as he drove his little finger into his pipe in an effort to save some of the tobacco.  “I was just beginnin’ a new piece.  Things is gittin’ so there ain’t a place left in this town for a man to read in peace and comfort.  Here I am, tryin’ to post up on the local doin’s, on polytics and religion, and ringin’ in my ears all the time is ‘lickin’ the teacher, lickin’ the teacher, lickin’ the teacher.’  S’pose every man here did lick the teacher in his time—­what of it, I says, what of it?”

“Yes, what of it?” said I, closing the door with a bang.