“I should worry,” I says. “And who you think’s going to sit down and write you all those big fat letters and postcards, by the way? Mr. Whitaker? Just because he was the only man ever dropped down in China Grove and you got him—unfairly—is he going to sit down and write you a lengthy correspondence after you come home giving no rhyme nor reason whatsoever for your separation and no explanation for the presence of that child? I may not have your brilliant mind, but I fail to see it.”

So Mama says, “Sister, I’ve told you a thousand times that Stella-Rondo simply got homesick, and this child is far too big to be hers,” and she says, “Now, why don’t you all just sit down and play Casino?”

Then Shirley-T. sticks out her tongue at me in this perfectly horrible way. She has no more manners than the man in the moon. I told her she was going to cross her eyes like that some day and they’d stick.

“It’s too late to stop me now,” I says. “You should have tried that yesterday. I’m going to the P.O. and the only way you can possibly see me is to visit me there.”

So Papa-Daddy says, “You’ll never catch me setting foot in that post office, even if I should take a notion into my head to write a letter some place.” He says, “I won’t have you reachin’ out of that little old window with a pair of shears and cuttin’ off any beard of mine. I’m too smart for you!”

“We all are,” says Stella-Rondo.

But I said, “If you’re so smart, where’s Mr. Whitaker?”

So then Uncle Rondo says, “I’ll thank you from now on to stop reading all the orders I get on postcards and telling everybody in China Grove what you think is the matter with them,” but I says, “I draw my own conclusions and will continue in the future to draw them.” I says, “If people want to write their inmost secrets on penny postcards, there’s nothing in the wide world you can do about it, Uncle Rondo.”

“And if you think we’ll ever write another postcard you’re sadly mistaken,” says Mama.

“Cutting off your nose to spite your face then,” I says. “But if you’re all determined to have no more to do with the U. S. mail, think of this: What will Stella-Rondo do now, if she wants to tell Mr. Whitaker to come after her?”

“Wah!” says Stella-Rondo. I knew she’d cry. She had a conniption fit right there in the kitchen.

“It will be interesting to see how long she holds out,” I says. “And now—I am leaving.”

“Good-bye,” says Uncle Rondo.