For as much as thirty
years he'd been the only man in the village that had a reputation--I mean
a reputation for being a traveler, and of course he was mortal proud of
it, and it was reckoned that in the course of that thirty years he had
told about that journey over a million times and enjoyed it every time.
And now comes along a boy not quite fifteen, and sets everybody admiring
and gawking over HIS travels, and it just give the poor old man the high
strikes. It made him sick to listen to Tom, and to hear the people say
"My land!" "Did you ever!" "My goodness sakes alive!" and all such
things; but he couldn't pull away from it, any more than a fly that's got
its hind leg fast in the molasses. And always when Tom come to a rest,
the poor old cretur would chip in on HIS same old travels and work them
for all they were worth; but they were pretty faded, and didn't go for
much, and it was pitiful to see. And then Tom would take another innings,
and then the old man again--and so on, and so on, for an hour and more,
each trying to beat out the other.
You see, Parsons' travels happened like this: When he first got to be
postmaster and was green in the business, there come a letter for
somebody he didn't know, and there wasn't any such person in the village.
Well, he didn't know what to do, nor how to act, and there the letter
stayed and stayed, week in and week out, till the bare sight of it gave
him a conniption.
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