Rock Island Argus

I know it was wrong for me to read her postcards, but I sort of got in the habit of doing it when I was walking past those vacant lots to her home, so before I knew it I was right up to the hilt in a romance.

You see, it was this way. I caught on to the facts from what she told me occasionally. Oscar Reidel, her sweetheart, who was a civil engineer, got a job quite a distance away from her during the summer. Before he left Oscar and Alice—her full name was Alice G. Minor—had a quarrel. It wasn't a very bad quarrel, I guess, but anyhow she told him he mustn't write a word to her during the time he was away.

Well, that made him rather spunky, and he said he'd do just as she said, but that he could send her picture postcards without writing a word to her, and he would send those.

Oscar was surely a "sender." At first the postcards came in fast and thick from him, and I used to wonder why it was he sent so many of them and no letters. That was before I knew about their quarrel and what she had said. The girl was as happy as a lark while she was getting so many of them, because she knew the man still cared for her. I could see easily enough that she liked him all right.

Then one day she handed me a postcard and sort of winked at me.

"I guess he'll sit up when he gets that," she said.

I looked at it when I got out of sight of the house. It was addressed to Oscar all right, and on the back was one of those printed postcard telegrams. The printing said:

"Am very busy. There's a new man in town!"

I tell you what—I hated to take that card to the office! I knew how badly it would make that young fellow feel away off in the wilds where he was. But I had to take it just the same.

You know you get sort of interested in people when you call on them the way I do every day, and I was anxious to see how Oscar would take the card. His postcards kept coming to her all right—there were views of the place where he was working and that sort of souvenir cards—and then they stopped all of a sudden. I reasoned that he'd quit sending them the day he got her card.

The girl was waiting for me, her face all shining, with smiles, the morning the mail for her.

"No cards for you today, Miss Alice," I said as she met me at the door.

The smiles all left her face at once, and she looked at me as though she couldn't believe it.

"No postcards at all?" she cried.

"Not one," I said. "Maybe the party that's been sending them to you is hurt."

At that she cried.

"Hurt! No; he can't be hurt!"

"I don't necessarily mean physically hurt," I replied. "There's other ways of being hurt than physically."

She looked at me rather strangely at this, then tossed her head, marched into the house and slammed the door after her.

There were no cards for her the next day, but I think she half expected there would be, for I caught a glimpse of her watching me behind the curtains in the parlor as I walked past.

The second day there were no cards, and again I saw her at the window. From the little glimpse I caught I thought she had been crying. The third day there was a single card, and before I thought I turned it over and looked at it. Then I wished I hadn't. The card was a photograph of Oscar looking lovingly at some pretty girl who in turn was looking lovingly at him. The girl, I surmised, belonged in the city where he was working, so I was mistaken in thinking it was such a wild place.

In the first place, I had no business to look at another person's mail. In the second place, it got me all tangled up worse than ever in the affairs of that couple. After seeing the card I had the hardest kind of a time bracing myself up to deliver it to the girl.

When I rang the Minor doorbell the girl fairly pulled it off the hinges, she was so eager to get it open.

"Oh," she cried, "you've got some postcards for me!"

"I've got one, miss," I said hesitatingly.

"Let me have it!" she cried and grabbed it from my hand.

She looked at it, and then I saw her white figure quiver. Then she straightened up, and without a word she went into the house and closed the door behind her.

I tell you I felt pretty bad about it. Not being married myself, I had got into feeling a sort of sense of ownership in that girl, and when she took it so to heart I felt that I ought to do something about it. I had no doubt that Oscar still cared for Miss Alice and had only hooked up with the other girl because he was mad at her postcard and thought that Miss Alice had given him the mitten. I was dead certain that Miss Alice still cared for him. I knew, though, that she was too proud now to do anything to settle up the quarrel. Consequently I saw it was up to me.

Finally I stepped into a drug store handy and bought a postcard telegram card myself. On the back of the card was printed:

"There's only one person in the world for me, and that's—you!"

I addressed this to Oscar in a handwriting that I know was almost identically the same as Miss Alice's. Then I mailed it.

The next few days passed mighty slow, I can tell you. I didn't know whether I had made matters better or worse, and I was mighty anxious about it. Poor Miss Alice seemed worn out each day when I passed her house. I kept hoping that I had made things all right with my card, and yet I was afraid.

And then one day in my route's mail I ran across a postcard for Miss Alice addressed in Oscar's hand and postmarked from the place where he was. That card would tell the tale!

My, how I wanted to look at that card! I don't believe I ever wanted to do anything so much as just to turn over that card and see what was on the back. Was it all right, or was it all wrong? In a moment I could see if I looked at her mail. But I reasoned it out that I had done enough wrong in doing it before. So I put the card in my bag without looking at the back of it and started out on my route.

I thought I never would get to the Minor house. My route never seemed so long before or since. Finally, however, I was on the block where the house was located. Slowly I worked my way up the street, and finally I rang the Minor doorbell.

"I have a postcard for you," I said.

A swift motion, half fear, half hope, dashed into her face.

"Oh, let me have it!" she cried.

I handed it to her. She turned her back to me as she looked at it so I couldn't tell from the way she looked whether it was good or bad news.

"He did as I told him," she said in a muffled voice, "to the very last. Even now he isn't writing a word."

I began to get nervous. She started to move inside the hall, and it looked as if I wasn't going to find out that day what the message was after all.

"I—I hope it isn't bad news, miss," I managed to stammer.

"Bad news!" she cried, wheeling around like a whirlwind. "Bad news! No, I should say not! The best of news—the very best of news! See here, you dear old postman!"

She held out the postcard where I could see. It was another postcard telegram. This was the message printed on it: "Expect me soon. Love you in the same old way!"