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The lower floor is occupied by the Post Office, and in front of the Post Office are a hitching-post and two long, weather-scarred benches, while just across the road I mean street on the boundary of the square proper is a near-bronze drinking-fountain and watering-trough erected from the proceeds of several fairs given by the local branch of the W. C. T. U. Naturally, indeed inevitably, all Radville gravitates to the Post Office, bringing the news with it, and stops to discuss it on the steps or the benches or by the fountain; and the acoustics are admirable.
The consumption of vanilly sody in those two days broke all known Radville records, and stands a singular tribute to the Spartan fortitude of Radville womanhood, particularly the young strata thereof. Duncan, after he had succeeded in taming the fountain, seemed rather to enjoy than object to dispensing sody, standing inspection and receiving adulation and nickels in unequal proportions.
As is my custom, I had devoted the earlier morning hours to the compilation of that work which is to gain for the name of Littlejohn a trifle more respect than, I fear, it owns in Radville nowadays; and afterwards, again in accordance with habit, had started out for my morning constitutional.
Not that I would have you think me whining: I have enough, little but ample for my simple needs, if inadequate for my ambitions or my neighbours' necessities. My editorial work for the Radville Citizen is quite remunerative, while my weekly column of local gossip for the Westerly Gazette brings me in a little, and I've one or two other modest sources of still more modest income.
You've behaved yourself ever since you come to Radville, and insinooated yourself into our confidence, 'spite of the fact that nobody in town knows who you were before you came. But now Roland's laid a charge again' you, and I want to know the rights to it." "Well," Roland interposed cockily, "I accused him of it to-night and he didn't deny it."
There's no accounting for it, indeed, save on the theory that she conceived it a woman's function to make up for man's deficiencies; Sam needed her, so she become his wife; he needed a manager, so she had became that also.... During Margaret's regime, as I say, the shop had thrived. Sam had few ill-wishers in Radville; the trade came his way. Then Betty was born and Margaret died....
He wasn't hardened enough to have an easy conscience, and Betty's open doubts as to the reason for his coming to Radville disturbed Duncan more than he would have cared to own. For all that, they worked together steadily, and accomplished a rather sensational transformation in the appearance of the place.
For he was quite calm and self-possessed so much so that I realised for the first time there was another man in Radville besides myself who did not fear old Colonel Bohun. "I'm here, colonel," he said quietly. "What is it you wish?" The colonel swung on him, shaking with passion.
To no one else in Radville would this have happened. On the other hand, no one else in Radville would have thrown away the cigar. Discomfort roused Duncan from his rest at an early hour, the morning following his arrival in Radville. I must confess that the beds in the Bigelow House are no better than they should be; in fact, according to Duncan, not so good.
He inherited a farm or two in the vicinity of Radville and the one over Westerly way, to which I have referred, and ... well, we've a homely paraphrase of a noted aphorism in Radville: "Them as has, gits." Lockwood had, to begin with, and he made it his business to get; and, as is generally the case in this unbalanced world of ours, things came to him to which he had never aspired.
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