[Illustration]
The Magic City, stretching itself far and near, had not failed to
include the little station.
Common walls of plank no longer enshrined the person of the Post
Mistress. She no longer looked out from the limited space of a narrow
window onto ragged flower beds in whose soft, loose earth floundered
wind-blown chickens.
She dwelt in the wide, white marble halls of a lofty new Post Office.
Bell boys, porters and stenographers surrounded her.
It was five o'clock. The Professor stood near while she sorted out
some letters and placed them in pigeon-holes. He was clad in the
latest fashion as laid down by the London Tailors who, at the first
sound of the Boom, had hastened on the wings of the wind to the Magic
City. His frock coat radiated newness, his patent leathers shone, and
a portion of the brim of a tall silk hat rested daintily between
thumb and fingers of a well-gloved hand.
As a matter of fact, since he had proved himself her friend through
thick and thin, through storms and adversity, through high winds and
blizzards, the Post Mistress had at last, after much persuasion,
awarded him the privilege of standing by her throughout the rest of
her natural existence.
A dapper youth in livery approached the window, asked for letters and
withdrew.
There was about him a certain air of elegance which yet had somehow
the subtle effect of having been reflected.
"Will Low's valet," explained the Post Mistress. "Sometimes it seems
to be a dream, all this. These men who sat around my big blazing stove
spinning cyclone yarns while they waited for the brakeman to fling in
the mailbag, sending their valets for their mail! It seems like magic,
doesn't it?"
"It does," assented the Professor.
"There's Zed Jones," continued the Post Mistress, "with his new drag,
his Queen Anne cottage built of gray stone, his Irish setters. And
Mrs. Zed sending to Paris for all her clothes, and the little Zeds
fine as fiddles with their ponies and their pony carts."
"And Hezekiah Smith," reminded the Professor.
"Who used to sleep on a pile of newspapers in his old newsstand on the
corner, driving his tandem now. And Howard Evans and Roger Cranes and
a dozen others, all poor as church mice then, and rich as cream now.
It is like fairy land. You, too," with an admiring glance at the frock
coat, "worth fifty thousand. And my bit of land bringing me a small
fortune. I think after," with another smile in his direction, "we'll
let some other lone single woman have this job who needs the money. We
won't keep the Post Office any longer."
The Professor smiled a silent assent.
"But the most wonderful thing of all," went on the Post Mistress, "is
that girl Cyclona. All of twenty-seven or eight, but she looks like a
girl. It was pretty cute of her, wasn't it, to jump Seth's claim?"
"She didn't exactly jump it," said the Professor. "She was taking care
of it after Seth went away, when her own topsy turvy house blew off
somewhere. She had no other home. I wouldn't exactly call it jumping
Seth's claim."
"Call it what you please," said the Post Mistress, "but it amounts to
the same thing. She got all the money the Wise Men paid for the claim,
and it went into the millions. Why, Seth's claim takes up the very
heart of the city. That girl's worth her weight in gold, that Cyclona,
and she deserves it, taking care of the baby first, then watching
after Seth. I believe she's in love with Seth. I believe she lives in
hopes that he'll come back again. I know. She is seen everywhere with
Hugh Walsingham, drivin' with him in her stylish little trap, a good
driver she is, too, after ridin' fiery bronchos, herdin' Seth's cattle
and livin' wild-like on the prairies. She's a splendid whip, afraid of
nothin'."
"But you can see in her big, stretchy faraway eyes that she ain't
thinkin' about Hugh Walsingham, that she's always thinkin' about Seth
and wishin' it was him a drivin' with her in that stylish little trap
of hers."
She stopped to read a postal card.
"Cyclona's a fine young woman," she resumed, "and a beautiful young
woman, if she is brown as a gypsy, but the wind has left a wheel in
her head. She has never been right since that storm that blew away the
topsy turvy house. Another shock and her mind will go entirely. I've
heard a doctor say so, a man who knows. She deserves all she's got and
a happy life with that handsome Englishman, but here she is with some
fool idea that the money, all these riches she's fallen heiress to,
that make her the belle of the Magic City, ain't hers. That they are
held in trust for Seth and Celia, that heartless Celia, who deserted
her husband and baby to go back to her home in the South.
"What right has that Celia got to any money that comes out of the West
she hated so, out of this wind-blown place she wouldn't live in? None
at all. No more right than I have. Leaving Seth out here on the plains
all by himself, grievin' for her, breakin' his heart for her, nearly
losin' his mind with grief about her.
"The money's Cyclona's. She worked for it, never thinkin' of the
reward. She took care of the child and looked after Seth. She deserves
all the good that can come to her, that girl does."
"She does," assented the Professor.
"Hugh Walsingham's in a good fix, too," continued the Post Mistress,
"sold his claim for a whole lot of money. Able now, he is, to help his
poor relations back there in England, who sent him to the plains to
get rid of him. Funny how things turn out sometimes."
"Cyclona coming out of Nowhere, and he packed off out of England, both
outcasts, both rich now and ready to live happy ever after, if Cyclona
would only get rid of this fool notion of hers that she's only holdin'
the riches in trust for Celia and Seth.
"Have you heard the news? It's this: You know Nancy Lewis, the
dish-washer in the restaurant before the Boom, the girl who happened
to save her earnings and buy a bit of land that turned into a gold
nugget? Well, a millionaire who made his money here, fell in love with
her. She accepted him, but he made a slight mistake. He failed to keep
an engagement with her one night and sent a waiter with a note. She
got huffy and went off and married the waiter.
"We can't rise all at once from our station in life, can we? Like as
not, when we get into our new house and put on style ourselves with
our drags and our dogs, I'll be sortin' out letters in my dreams and
handin' them through a dream window to the people. This girl is a born
dish-washer. She clung to her station. Her children may rise from the
position of dish-washers, if they have enough money and education, but
not she."
"Wait a minute. Here's a postcard I haven't read yet. It looks like
it's been through a cyclone. Land sakes alive! Guess who it's from!"
"Can't," said the Professor, beginning to be hungry.
The Post Mistress turned the card over and over.
"It's from Jonathan, Cyclona's father," she chuckled. "Of all the
people in the world! It is post-marked Texas."
"So that's where they blew to! It's to Cyclona, but everybody will be
dying to know what it says. Listen:
"'Dear Cyclona:--
"'I think you will be glad to hear that this cyclone was good
to us, blowin' us 'way down here in Texas, where the weather
is so fine. It saved me the trouble, too, of bothering with
the roof. It blew it right side up and the clothes are all
down in the room now.'"
"'Your affectionate father,'"
"'Jonathan.'"
"'P.S.--I like this part of the country better than I did
Kansas. I think we will stay here, Cyclona.'"
"Until another cyclone comes along," the Professor commented, "and
blows him into the Gulf."
"I wonder," mused the Post Mistress, "if the cyclone put the clothes
away in the presses when it took them down from the walls."