I gave you five dollars for the first picture and verses,
which you, as a writer, regard more highly than I, who am
merely a manufacturer. Please accept twenty dollars for "The
Folks Back Home," on which I hope to make up my loss on the
first card! I insist on signing the despised verse with your
initials. In case R. L. should later come to mean
something, you will be glad that a few thousand people have
seen it.
Sincerely,
REUBEN SMALL.
The Hessian soldier andirons, the portrait over the Boynton mantel,
and even Letty Boynton's cape were identified on the first card,
sooner or later, but it was obvious that Mrs. Larrabee had to have a
picture for her verses and couldn't be supposed to make one up "out of
her head"; though Osh Popham declared it had been done again and again
in other parts of the world. Also it was agreed that, as Letty's face
was not distinguishable, nobody outside of Beulah could recognize her
by her cape; and that anyhow it couldn't make much difference, for if
anybody wanted to spend fifteen cents on a card he would certainly buy
the one about "the folks back home." The popularity of this was
established by the fact that it was selling, not only in Beulah and
Greentown, but in Boston, and in Racine, Wisconsin, and, it was
rumored, even in Chicago. The village milliner in Beulah had disposed
of twenty-seven copies in thirteen days and the minister's wife was
universally conceded to be the most celebrated person in the State of
New Hampshire.
Letty Boynton had an uncomfortable moment when she saw the first card,
but common sense assured her that outside of a handful of neighbors no
one would identify her home surroundings; meantime she was proud of
Reba's financial and artistic triumph in "The Folks Back Home" and
generously glad that she had no share in it.
Twice during the autumn David had broken his silence, but only to
send her a postal from some Western town, telling her that he should
have no regular address for a time; that he was traveling for a
publishing firm and felt ill-adapted to the business. He hoped that
she and the children were well, for he himself was not; etc., etc.
The twins had been photographed by Osh Popham, who was Jack of all
trades and master of many, and a sight of their dimpled charms, curly
heads, and straight little bodies would have gladdened any father's
heart, Letty thought. However, she scorned to win David back by any
such specious means. If he didn't care to know whether his children
were hump-backed, bow-legged, cross-eyed, club-footed, or
feeble-minded, why should she enlighten him? This was her usual frame
of mind, but in these last days of the year how she longed to pop the
bewitching photographs and Reba's Christmas cards into an envelope and
send them to David.
But where? No word at all for weeks and weeks, and then only a postal
from St. Joseph, saying that he had given up his position on account
of poor health. Nothing in all this to keep Christmas on, thought
Letty, and she knitted and crocheted and sewed with extra ardor that
the twins' stockings might be filled with bright things of her own
making.
[Illustration]