leavin’ for Florida, and come into the store, I was ready for him. He grinned and asked me if he had any mail.

"While you’re about it," he says, chucklin’, "you can pay me that bet."

Now the very sound of the word "bet" hit me on a sore place. I’d lost one hat to Mr. Pike and the letter I’d got from him rubbed me across the grain every time I thought of it.

"What bet?" says I.

"Why, the bet you made that the Blaisdell woman would be postmistress here."

"I didn’t bet that," I says.

"You didn’t?" he roared. "You did, too! You bet—"

"I bet that Mary would handle the mail, that’s all. So she will; fact is, she’s handlin’ it now. She’s my assistant in the post-office here. If you don’t believe it, go back to the mail window and look in. No, Major, _I_ win the bet."

Maybe I did, but he wouldn’t pay it. He vowed I was a low down swindler and a "welsher," whatever that is. He blew out of that store like a toy typhoon and I didn’t see him again until the next summer. However, I had a feelin’ that Major Cobden Clark wa’n’t the wust friend I had, by a consider’ble sight.

You see, that was Jim Henry’s great scheme—to hire Mary to run the office as my assistant. He didn’t say what salary I was to pay her, and, if I chose to hand over three-quarters of the postmaster’s pay to her, what business was it of his? I told him that plain, and, to do him justice, he didn’t seem to care.

But he did rub it in about my declarin’ I’d never go into politics.

In a little while the mail department was as much a part of the "Ostable Grocery, Dry Goods, Boots and Shoes and Fancy Goods Store" as the calico and dress goods counter. We bought the Blaisdell letter-box rack and fixin’s and set ’em up and they done fust-rate for the time bein’. I was postmaster, so fur as name goes, but ’twas Mary that really run that end of the ship. It seemed as natural to have her come in mornin’s, as it did for the sun to rise; and, if she was late, which didn’t happen often, it seemed almost as if the sun hadn’t rose. The old store needed somethin’ like her to keep it clean and sweet and even Jim Henry give in that she was the best investment the business had made yet.

As for business it kept on good, even though the summer 

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