Pearl rustled the paper impatiently.  She was not interested in this news.  Hanson occupied her thoughts so little that she did not even pause to wonder how he was.  The very sight of his name in the letter stirred a vague irritation in her.  Absorbed in her love for Seagreave, Hanson had become to her as a forgotten episode.

However, her mother dropped the subject and took up the more interesting one of Lolita.  “That bird certainly has mourned for you, Pearl.  I guess she’d have just about pined away if it hadn’t been for Bob Flick.”

But Pearl was not the only recipient of letters from the outside world; all of the little group, with the exception of Jose, had received their quota, even Mrs. Nitschkan.  But the bulk of the mail, which Gallito brought up from the village postoffice and gravely distributed, fell to Mrs. Thomas.  Almost without exception, these envelopes were addressed in straggling, masculine characters which suggested painful effort and seemed to indicate that the writers were more used to the pick and shovel than to the pen.  But although Mrs. Thomas had to spell out the contents of each missive with more or less difficulty, her giggles, blushes and occasional exclamations showed how much pleasure they afforded her.

Mrs. Nitschkan, however, after glancing carelessly at the large, yellow envelope which was addressed to her in a clerkly hand, cast it carelessly aside and went on assiduously cleaning and oiling her gun.  But the sight of it aroused Mrs. Thomas’s curiosity, and after glancing at it once or twice over the top of her own letters, she could not forbear to ask: 

“Ain’t you going to read your letter, Sadie?”

“Mebbe.  Sometime.  By an’ by.  When I get good an’ ready,” returned the gypsy indifferently and abstractedly, squinting with one eye down the barrel of her gun.  “What do I want with letters?  I got two bear an’ a mountain lion before the snow flew.”

Mrs. Thomas laid aside her letters for the moment, and, lifting a large pot of coffee from the stove, poured out a cupful for her friend and then one for herself.  “Here, Sadie,” she coaxed, “rest yourself with a cup of coffee.  I’ll set down the sugar and cream an’ whilst you’re drinking it, open your letter.  Come now, do.  Maybe it’s from a gentleman.”

“It sure is,” replied Mrs. Nitschkan, laying her gun carefully across her knee, wiping her hands on the cloth with which she had been polishing it, and then dropping several lumps of sugar into the cup, she poured herself a liberal allowance of cream.  “It’s a bill for that double-j’inted, patent, electrical fishin’ rod that I sent East for, clean to New York City, for a weddin’ present for Celia.”

Mrs. Thomas gave a faint, scornful laugh at the thought of this most incongruous gift for Mrs. Nitschkan’s pretty, feminine daughter.  “A fishin’ rod for Celia!” she exclaimed, “when all she ever thinks about is cookin’ an’ sweepin’ an’ sewin’ all day.”