hing a letter to his "mother."
Bannister is doubtless already abed, but ready from his cot to add a
sleepy jest to the quiet talk that is slowly going on. Reardon is putting
the last stamps on the sheaf of post-cards that he daily sends, for he,
you must understand, has more correspondents at home than any of the rest
of us. Rather big and burly, the quietest of men, with a very active eye
but very intensely committed to the minding of his own business, I know
him to be the most popular man in his own little town, where as the
managing clerk of the grocery he knows every man, woman, and child in the
place. He knows the taste of each, what he habitually needs or demands,
whether to trust or require cash. He gets through his day without a clash
with anyone. And knowing both his customers and the market he looks after
the needs of the town, warns of a rise in prices, calls attention to
special bargains, advises to lay in a stock of this or that. They miss
him now that he's gone; I know it by the pleasure he takes in the letters
and post-cards that come daily, bits from which he cannot help reading
out to us--from the Civil War veteran who half believes in Plattsburg,
and half doesn't; the drug-store clerk that has to go off on his vacation
alone; the "boss" that has nothing personal to say, but quotes the market
changes; the neighbor who doesn't quite venture to trust to the post the
doughnuts she wishes she might send. And nightly Reardon sits on his cot
and writes in the dim light careful answers to every message.

Lucy and Corder are putting themselves to bed most systematically, Corder
because of his middle-aged habit, Lucy on account of that aristocratic
cleanliness in which he has been scrupulously bred. They have their
system and their order, the toilet, the costume, the making of the bed,
all very careful and precise. Knudsen, still dressed, is lolling on his
cot and jollying; this is the time of day when he most comes out of
himself, and I know that presently when I approach the tent it will be
his ringing tenor that I shall hear. He is poking fun at the others,
cursing that last shot on the range, interrupting Reardon and Clay in
their writing, philosophizing on his favorite subject, baseball. Yet if
you get a little closer to him you find that he has interests that it
takes a little coaxing to disclose: religious convictions that he has
changed with his growth, curious hard business experiences that make him
decl