The Andre Norton Megapack - 15 Classic Novels and Short Stories

spent all her time in idle speculations that came to nothing? She found a stamp, stuck it on the letter with unnecessary force, and went back to Christopher.
    “I don’t know when the mail goes, Chris, but will you please take this for me? Don’t make a special trip but I would like it to go out today.”
    “Yes ma’am. I was fixin’ to cut this here grass, and straighten out the contents of the stockroom. Mail don’t go nohow this forenoon. Reckon I can take it when I go for the mail round about twelve o’clock.”
    “Good.” Fredericka turned to go back into the house when Chris spoke again.
    “I’ve been thinking further about that ole well. It do make me worry some, all open like it am. I put an ole box cover over it like but it’s not much use. Sam Lewis is doin’ a job down the road. I could jes’ ax him to come by and have a look at it.”
    “I’ve written to Miss Hartwell, Chris. We ought to have an answer in a few days. Don’t you think we can get along until we hear? I don’t really like to involve Miss Hartwell in expense unless I’m sure she wants me to.”
    “Yes, ma’am, O.K. then.” Chris now put his dilapidated hat on his head with an age-old gesture of resignation and loped off through the jungle path. Fredericka returned to her dishes and then to her desk, and, after a few moments, was relieved to hear the clanking whir of the lawn mower. He seems to be doing the side lawn, she thought. So he must have recovered from his panic. That was one good thing.
    She continued to work steadily but some impulse made her get up and go to the window when the lawn mower stopped suddenly. Between the two trees where the hammock had hung, Chris was down on his hands and knees. Praying? Fredericka asked herself. Surely not. She was about to go to the door and investigate when Chris got to his feet and returned to the lawn mower. I must pull myself together, Fredericka decided. There is no doubt whatever that he was trimming the grass around the trees—
    After this interruption, the morning passed uneventfully except for a telephone call from Thane Carey who had received the sergeant’s report. She told him briefly of her adventure and he questioned her closely. Then he said that he was on his way out to the Farm and would, himself, question Margie. He sounded abrupt and hurried and after a few brief pleasantries, he hung up. Well, he doesn’t seem to be much alarmed, Fredericka decided as she returned to her desk. Thank heaven I didn’t get him out of bed in the middle of the night.
    Two or three customers came to return books to the lending library and lingered to ask the inevitable questions. But Fredericka despatched them quickly, having now learned a satisfactory technique for dealing with them. Each time she remembered the little silver box, but none of her visitors had ever seen it before. They looked at it with undisguised interest, however. “Better put up a notice in the post office,” one of them suggested.
    “I will if all else fails,” Fredericka said, slipping the box back into its drawer.
    She was still working at the pile of bills and orders on her desk when she was aware that someone had come in behind her. She turned quickly to see Chris standing in the doorway.
    “What is it?” she asked, trying to keep the fright and annoyance from her voice. Why did he have to creep so? “I thought Miss Hartwell didn’t like you coming in the house with your boots on,” she added severely.
    “I took them off, Ma’am, Miss Wing.” He handed her a pile of letters. Fredericka looked down at his stockinged feet and one large protruding toe, and was ashamed of her outburst.
    “Thanks, Chris.”
    When he did not at once depart, she looked up at him.
    “I saw you had a stamp there from foreign parts—” He coughed. ‘France.’ Then, in a rush, he added, “Miss Hartwell very kindly give me such stamps for my collection.”
    “Of course, Chris.” She tore open the letter carefully and cut out the stamp.
    Chris took it and stared at it for a moment. “Miss Catherine she got one jes’ the same as this here one. But she won’t be there. No ma’am. Bein’ as how she am dead,” he added lugubriously.
    “No. You take the Farm mail too?” Why all this service to the Farm? And why am I so unnaturally curious? she asked herself.
    “Yes, ma’am. I am, as yo’all might say, the postman hereabouts and the freight man and the general handyman, as it were.”
    “I see. Then I