vowed I wouldn’t. He was tickled to death. The post-office was the greatest thing to bring trade that the store could have, and so on. I _must_ take the job. If I didn’t somebody else would, somebody that, more’n likely, we wouldn’t like any better than we did Abubus.

"No," says I. "_No!_ Mary Blaisdell shall have—"

"She won’t get it anyway," says he. "She’s out of it—Shelton as much as says so—whatever happens. And she don’t want the title anyway. All she needs or cares for is the pay and I’ve thought of a way to fix that. You listen."

I listened—under protest, and the upshot of it was that the next day I went up to see Mary. She’d heard that I was likely to get the appointment—old Clark had been doin’ some hintin’ afore he left town, I cal’late—and she congratulated me as hearty as if ’twas what she’d wanted all along. But I wa’n’t huntin’ congratulations. I felt as mean as if I’d been took up by the constable for bein’ a chicken thief, and I told her so.

"Mary," says I, "I wa’n’t after the postmastership. I swear by all that is good and great I wa’n’t. I don’t know what you must think of me."

"What I’ve always thought," says she, "and what poor Henry thought before he died. My opinion is like Major Clark’s," with a kind of half smile, "that the appointment has gone to the best man in Ostable."

"My, my!" says I. "_Your_ digestion ain’t given you delirium, has it? No sir-ee! I’m no more fit to be postmaster than a ship’s goat is to teach school."

"You mustn’t talk so," she says, earnest. "You will take the position, won’t you?"

"I’ll take it," says I, "under one condition." Then I told her what the condition was. She argued against it at fust, but after I’d said flat-footed that ’twas either that or the government could take its appointment and make paper boats of it, and she’d seen that I meant it, she give in.

"But," says she, chokin’ up a little, "I know you’re doin’ this just to help me. How I can ever repay your kindness I don’t—"

I cut in quick. My deadlights was more misty than I like to have ’em. "Rubbish!" says I, "I’m doin’ it to win my bet with old Clark. I’d do anything to beat out that old critter."

So it happened that when, along in November, the Major came back to Ostable to look over his place, afore 

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