Every minute or two some one of them would shout: “Come, Lee, give us out one of the papers, anyway!” But for some reason Mrs. Watkins was inexorable. Her pursed-up lips and resolute expression told us plainly that none would be served till all were sorted. So the impatient waiters bided their time under protest, exchanging splenetic remarks under their breath. We must have stood there three-quarters of an hour. At last Mrs. Watkins wiped her hands on the apron over her bloomers. Everybody knew the signal, and on the instant a dozen arms were stretched vehemently toward Lee, struggling for precedence. In another moment wrappers had been ripped off and sheets flung open. Then the store was alive with excited voices. “Yes, sir! It’s true! The Copperheads have won!” “_Tribune_ concedes Seymour’s election!” “We’re beaten in the district by less’n a hundred!” “Good-by, human liberty!” “Now we know how Lazarus felt when he was licked by the dogs!” and so on--a stormy warfare of wrathful ejaculations. In my turn I crowded up, and held out my hand for the paper I saw in the box. Lee Watkins recognized me, and took the paper out to deliver to me. But at the same moment his wife, who had been hastily scanning the columns of some other journal, looked up and also saw who I was. With a lightning gesture she threw out her hand, snatched our _World_ from her husband’s grasp, and threw it spitefully under the counter. “There ain’t nothing for _you!_” she snapped at me. “Pesky Copperhead rag!” she muttered to herself. Although I had plainly seen the familiar wrapper, and understood her action well enough, it never occurred to me to argue the question with Mrs. Watkins. Her bustling, determined demeanor, perhaps also her bloomers, had always filled me with awe. I hung about for a time, avoiding her range of vision, until she went out into her kitchen. Then I spoke with resolution to Lee: “If you don’t give me that paper,” I said, “I’ll tell Abner, an’ he’ll make you sweat for it!” The postmaster stole a cautious glance kitchen-ward. Then he made a swift, diving movement under the counter, and furtively thrust the paper out at me. “Scoot!” he said, briefly, and I obeyed him. Abner was simply wild with bewildered delight over what this paper had to tell him. Even my narrative about Mrs. Watkins, which ordinarily would have thrown him into transports of rage, provoked only a passing sniff. “They’ve only got two more years to hold that post-office,” was his only remark upon it. Hurley and Janey Wilcox and even the Underwood girl came in, and listened to Abner reading out the news. He shirked nothing, but waded manfully through long tables of figures and meaningless catalogues of counties in other States, the names of which he scarcely knew how to pronounce: “‘Five hundred and thirty-one townships in Wisconsin give Brown 21,409, Smith 16,329, Ferguson 802, a Republican loss of 26.’ Do you see that, Hurley? It’s everywhere the same.”