That kind of thing would have spoiled most boys. But Eddie
had a sensible mother. On those nights when he used to come home
nauseated with dealing out chop suey sundaes and orangeades, and
saying that there was no future for a fellow in our dead little
hole, his mother would give him something rather special for
supper, and set him hoeing and watering the garden.
So Eddie stuck to his job, and waited, and all the time he was
saying, with a melting look, to the last silly little girl who was
drinking her third soda, "Somebody looks mighty sweet in pink
to-day," or while he was doping to-morrow's ball game with one of
the boys who dropped in for a cigar, he was thinking of bigger
things, and longing for a man-size job.
The man-size job loomed up before Eddie's dazzled eyes when he
least expected it. It was at the close of a particularly hot day
when it seemed to Eddie that every one in town had had everything
from birch beer to peach ice cream. On his way home to supper he
stopped at the postoffice with a handful of letters that old man
Kunz had given him to mail. His mother had told him that they
would have corn out of their own garden for supper that night, and
Eddie was in something of a hurry. He and his mother were great
pals.
In one corner of the dim little postoffice lobby a man was
busily tacking up posters.
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