hurried over and, after consider’ble arguin’, I got Mary to say she’d try for the place. All the rest of that day I put in drivin’ from Dan to Beersheby gettin’ signatures. And I got ’em, too, a schooner load of ’em. I had the petition ready to show the Major that evenin’; but, when he come into the store, he had a petition, too, just as long as mine. And the worst of it was, in a lot of cases the same names was signed to both papers. Accordin’ to those petitions the heft of Ostable folks wanted somebody to keep post-office and they didn’t much care who. They wanted to please me and they didn’t like to say no to the Major.

He was mad and I was mad and we had another session. But he wouldn’t cross the names off and neither would I and so, after another week, both petitions went in as they was. All the good they seemed to do was that we each got a letter from the Post-office Department and Mary Blaisdell was allowed to hold over her brother’s place until somebody was picked out permanent. And every evenin’ Major Clark came into the store to tell me Abubus was sure to win and get my prediction that Mary was as good as elected. One week dragged along and then another, and ’twas still a draw, fur’s a body could tell. The Washin’ton folks wa’n’t makin’ a peep.

But old Ancient and Honorable Clark was workin’ his wires on the quiet and I must give in that he pulled one on me that I wa’n’t expectin’. The whole town had got sort of tired of guessin’ and talkin’ about the post-office squabble and had drifted back into the reg’lar rut of pickin’ their neighbors to pieces. The Major had set ’em talkin’ on a new line durin’ the last fortni’t. He’d been fixin’ up his house and havin’ the grounds seen to, and so forth. Likewise he’d bought an automobile, one of the nobbiest kind. This was somethin’ of a surprise, 'cause afore that he’d been pretty much down on autos and did his drivin’ around in a high-seated sort of buggy—"dog cart" he called it—though 'twas hauled by a horse and he hated dogs so that he kept a shotgun loaded with rock salt on his porch to drive stray ones off his premises.

"Who’s goin’ to run that smell-wagon of yours?" I asked him, sarcastic.

He kept comin’ to the store just the same as ever and we had our reg’lar rows constant. I cal’late we’d both have missed ’em if they’d stopped. I know I should.

"Humph!" he snorts; "smell-wagon, hey? If it smells any worse than that old fish dory of yours, I’ll have it buried, for the sake of the public health."

By "fish 

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