Read Ebook: The Blissylvania Post-Office by Taggart Marion Ames

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Ebook has 599 lines and 24524 words, and 12 pages

Miss Isabel wrote the numbers, and they drew, Amy number one, Trix two, Margery three, and Jack four.

"Now please show me the boxes. Why, they are very nicely made, Jack; did you do it alone?"

"Yes, Miss Isabel," said Jack, beaming, all trace of anger melted in the sunshine of her presence.

"And look, Miss Isabel, here's the drop-box," cried Amy. "You put letters through the slit in the top, and when you have a parcel you lift the cover and put it inside."

Miss Isabel laughed.

"That is a wee bit like the story of the man who made a large hole for his cat to go in and out, and a small one alongside for the kitten. But it is certainly the nicest kind of a post-office, and I think, perhaps, that I shall get more pleasure out of it than any of you." Which was a much truer prophecy than Miss Isabel herself dreamed. "We are to write letters to-morrow, and begin Monday, are we not?"

"Yes; oh, what fun!" cried Trix, catching Amy around the waist, and waltzing her about the old apple-tree and back again.

No one but Margery seemed to remember "the late unpleasantness;" she stood a little apart, very pale, but trying to smile.

"Do you know, I think it is unusually warm for the sixth of June?" remarked Miss Isabel. "I wonder if I could get any one to walk down to Bent's to eat ice-cream with me?"

Jack turned a somersault at once.

"Don't try if you don't want to succeed, Miss Isabel," he said.

"Come, then, every one of you," she cried merrily, "for I do want to succeed. And I propose that we wear our beautiful new badges, for we are to go in a body as a club."

"Let me pin them on, please," said Margery. She had been longing for a chance to beg pardon, and saw it here. "I'm dreadfully sorry I was so cross, Jack," she whispered, pinning the badge, and at the same time rubbing her cheek on his gray jacket.

"Oh, that's all right, Megsy. You're never much cross," he whispered back, and would have liked to have kissed her little white face, for he dearly loved his cousin.

"Please forgive me, Trix, for being so mean," she whispered, as she reached her, and Trix stared at her for a moment in amazement.

"Why, I forgot all about it," she said. "I was meaner than you anyhow." And she kissed her.

Amy put her arms around Margery before she could speak. "It's all right, Margery; forgive me, too," she whispered.

And so, at peace with all the world and each other, the Happy Thought Club, that had so narrowly escaped destruction, sallied forth to eat ice-cream.

THE MYSTERIOUS TENANT.

THE opening of the post-office was a great success. Amy, who was the first to go into office as postmistress, had a busy time for the three days of her term. Every member of the H. T. C. wrote the other four one letter a day with praiseworthy regularity, so there were twenty letters daily for the postmistress of Blissylvania to handle, not to mention packages and papers, and the invisible city of Blissylvania did more mail business than many of Uncle Sam's offices in far-off country places. There was a slight falling off in mail on the second day of Trix's term, which followed Amy's, for Jack found so much and such regular correspondence exhausting to mind and body, and was first to complain that he had nothing to say. It was even found, when the ladies compared notes on the fifth day after the office opened, that he had basely written one letter, and copied it three times--Miss Isabel requiring a different style of composition--but they had agreed to feign ignorance of this action, charitably excusing it on the ground of boys' well-known deficiencies.

There was difficulty about Margery's address. She insisted that the whole title and address must be used, but Jack declared it was expecting too much of any one to write on the small space of the back of their letters, which for economy's sake were so folded as to serve instead of envelopes: "Lady Griselda, At the Castle of the Lonely Lake, Blissylvania, New York," which was what Margery desired.

They compromised, following Miss Isabel's suggestion, on "Lady Griselda of the Castle, Blissylvania, New York," because, as Miss Isabel pointed out, there could be no mistake, there being but one Lady Griselda and one castle.

Taken altogether, the post-office could hardly have succeeded better, and if there were any danger of its losing charm, it was saved by a new interest arising, which gave a novel topic for conversation and supplied Jack with the needed subject for correspondence.

It was a little after eight o'clock on the sixth morning after the post-office opened, and Margery was practising. She was as faithful in this as in everything else, and to the inexpressible wonder of her playmates no strategy or coaxing could get her to leave the piano before her time was up. This seemed to Trix, who seized any excuse to shorten the hated task, little short of insanity, and a new proof of the queerness that they all recognized in dreamy, sensitive Margery. They did not understand that Margery was an unconscious philosopher, and since the thought of an unfulfilled duty would spoil her pleasure, preferred to secure a thorough good time by clearing away any possible hindrances to one.

Trix came into the room, and finding Margery at the piano, sighed.

"I suppose there's no use talking to you until you're done," she said, throwing herself in a big chair. "And I've the most interesting thing to tell you."

Margery shook her head.

"How long must you practise; till half after?"

Margery nodded, the nod coming in well on an accented note. Up and down went the nimble fingers, playing an exercise, with the metronome ticking on the piano.

Trix fidgeted and wriggled down in the chair, and pulled herself up, watching the clock the while.

"In ten minutes," sang Margery to the accompaniment of the scale. "Play with Tommy Traddles while you wait."

"I am not," said Margery, coming down in flat contradiction and a false chord at one and the same time. "I'm chewing the side of my tongue."

"Why don't you have a cud?" asked Trix, delighted at having trapped Margery into speech. But she was not to be caught again.

Shaking her head she began playing her new piece, which, true to her principles, she had left till the last. Finally the tiresome clock struck once. Trix sprang up.

"You shall not finish that page," she cried, catching Margery around the waist and pulling her off the stool. "You said half-past, and it is half-past; so stop."

"Well, you'll have to," declared Trix. "Listen to me. The Dismals is rented!"

"The Dismals" was the children's name for a very large, untenanted place called the Evergreens.

"Why, the Dismals is never rented!" cried Margery. "It hasn't had any one in it since we were born."

"Yes; but it has now," replied Trix. "There is a man there, and he lives all alone. Our waitress, Katie, told me about it last night. I thought I'd never go to sleep for thinking about him. Katie knows a girl that saw him go through the hedge and disappear under the Dismals' pine-trees. There is something queer about him; Katie says so. They don't know whether he's crazy or whether he's wicked, or perhaps he's both. Katie says we may all be murdered in our beds. She says she thinks he's a robber who has come from somewhere, and is to make the Dismals his den. But Katie says some think he's a murderer hiding there, and again some think he's got the evil eye."

"What's that?" asked Margery, shuddering; "another eye, or what?"

"No, you goose," cried Trix; "it's an eye that looks just like others, only it's kind of set and stony, and when people look at it they're never lucky any more."

But this had not the effect Trix anticipated.

"I don't believe that," said Margery; "that sounds like a ghost story, or something of that kind. Besides, if there were an evil eye it couldn't hurt us, for we wear our medals, and if we met him we'd just hold on to them and say Hail Marys till he went by."

Trix was staggered.

"Katie didn't say so, and Katie's a Catholic," she remarked.

"Yes; but Katie doesn't understand," said Margery. "You ought to teach her not to be superstitious, Trix."

This was taking the conversation into the realms of morals, and Trix wished it to be only thrilling.

"Well, what if he's crazy or wicked?" she demanded.

"That's different," replied Margery promptly. "We'll be late for school; wait till I get my hat and catechism, and we'll talk about it going along."

She came back in a moment, and the two little girls went out into the June sunshine on their way to the convent, where they were to have a catechism instruction, though it was Saturday.

"I think myself it's much more likely he's crazy, or a robber, or something awful," Trix resumed. "You see, no one who was all right could live alone in such a dreadful place as the Dismals."

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