Letter in the Mail

As a general rule, almost everybody likes to receive mail, and probably nobody in the whole town of Stillwater liked to get letters in the mail more than Ray Buffin. However, the fact was that Ray received fewer letters in his box at the post office than anybody else.
“Dog bite it!” Ray would say with a sad expression on his long thin face when he took one more last look at his box and left the post office. At a time like that his whole tall bony body drooped with disappointment. “No mail again this time, but I’ve got a good feeling deep down inside of me that one of these days I’m going to get some.’’
It had been like that with Ray Buffin almost all of his life. He had no living relatives to write to him and he received no letters from creditors. However, once a month he did get a bill from the gas and electric company, occasionally there was a letter from some candidate who was running for a political office, and every September he got tax bill for the year.
And, of course, since he had no relatives to correspond with and did not know anybody outside of Stillwater, he had no chance to write a letter himself. The only exception had been once many years before — he had been about thirty years old at the time — when he had written a letter to a young girl in town telling her how much he admired her and saying how beautiful he thought she was. He had ended the letter by asking her to marry him, but he had not received a reply.
Like a great number of other small towns, Sillwater, which had a population of about five hundred and fifty persons, was not situated on a railroad or main highway, and mail was received only once a day.
Every afternoon, except Sundays, the bus from New Orleans stopped in the town square in front of the post office and the driver opened the door and tossed out two or three mailbags containing letters, magazines and packages. It was usually about four o’clock when the bus arrived, and a few minutes after that Sid Stoney, the postmaster, began sorting the letters and putting them into the little glass- windowed boxes.
At that time of afternoon Ray Buffin always locked up his repair shop, where he made a living repairing radios and alarm clocks and boys’ air rifles, and hurried across the square to the post office. Getting as close as he could to his box, which was No. 42, he would stand there anxiously watching the little glass window while Sid Stoney took his time about sorting and distributing the day’s mail. A lot of people complained that Sid, who was a Republican, took too much time to sort so little mail, claiming that it could easily be done in fifteen or twenty minutes by a Democrat instead of half an hour or longer. Whenever anybody spoke to Sid about it, he always said that since he had only one delivery of mail a day, he felt it was his duty to sort and distribute it as carefully as possible, regardless of the amount of time devoted to it.
People joked and gossiped while they waited, but Ray Buffin rarely said a word as he stood there hopefully watching No. 42 until the last piece of mail had been distributed. Finally, when all the mail was distributed, Ray would take one last look at his box and then walk slowly across the square with his thin face drooping with disappointment.
“Dog bite it!” he would mutter to himself over and over again. “No mail again this time.”
When he reached his repair shop, he unlocked the door and went inside. There he would sit hunched over his workbench until late at night repairing somebody’s radio or alarm clock or air rifle.
There were two young men in town, Guy Hodge and Ralph Barnhill, who were always thinking up some jokes to play on people. One afternoon after watching Ray Buffin wait so hopefully for mail they got to talking and decided that they would send him a letter signed with a fictitious name. Their jokes were always good-natured and were never intended to harm anybody.
So they decided that they would tell everybody in the post office to watch Ray when he received a letter in his box, and then somebody would ask him in a loud voice if he had received a love-letter from a girl. After that somebody would snatch the letter out of his hand and read it aloud for everybody to hear.
Guy and Ralph went around the corner to the telephone exchange where Grace Brooks was the night switchboard- operator.
Gracie was a plump, bright-haired, elderly girl who had worked for the telephone company since she graduated from high school. She had remained single all those years, and because she lived such a lonely life, working all night and sleeping during the day, she knew that there was little opportunity now for her to meet somebody who would marry her.

Guy Hodge and Ralph Barnhill told her to write the letter to Ray, because they wanted it to be in feminine handwriting. At first Gracie said that she would have nothing to do with the scheme.
“That’s cruel”, she told them, shaking her head. “I could never do a cruel thing like that.”
“But it’s only a joke, Gracie,” Ralph tried to explain, “and it’s all in fun. Everybody likes a harmless joke once in a while. And just think of the sight it’s going to be when Ray gets a love-letter on pink paper from somebody named Myrtle or Jenny or Florence saying she has secretly admired him for a long time and can’t conceal her feeling for another single day. That sad-faced look of his will disappear so fast that nobody in town will recognize him.”
“No! It’s too cruel!” she protested loudly, wiping a tear first from one eye and then from the other. “I wouldn’t do a cruel thing like that for anything in the world!”
“Come on, Gracie,” Ralph pleaded. “Be a good sport and write the letter for us. We won’t tell Ray or anybody else that you wrote it. He’ll never know. You won’t have to worry about that.”
Suddenly turning around and hiding her face, Gracie tried to keep her eyes from filling with tears, but she was unable to keep them from streaming down her cheeks. It seemed like a lifetime since she had received a letter from Ray Buffin saying he admired her more than any other girl in the world and wanted to marry her. She had just graduated from high school then and had started to work for the telephone company, and, since she was girlishly carefree and had no thoughts about marrying any man at such a young age, she ignored the letter. During all those years they had seen each other occasionally, but rarely more than a polite greeting had passed between them, and each time she saw Ray he looked sadder and more lonely. In recent years there had been times when she wanted to run to Ray, throw her arms around his neck, and beg him to forgive her for not answering his letter. If she had answered his letter, they probably would have been married1 all those years and neither of them would be lonely now.
“Please, Gracie,” Guy Hodge begged her. “Come on and be a good sport and write the letter for us. If you don’t we’ll have to find somebody else to write it.”
“No!” she said quickly, wiping the tears from her eyes and cheeks. “Don’t do that! I want to write it! I don’t want anybody else to do it!”
“That’s good, Gracie,” Ralph said, patting her on the shoulder. “I knew you’d like a good joke. Now, let’s see what you ought to say in it. I think you ought to tell him you’ve admired him for a long time and that you’d like to become better acquainted with him. Then you could say that if he had no objection, you’d like to see him as soon as possible and talk about a personal matter that would ‘be of mutual interest. Let him think that what you really want is to get married. Then you can sign it with any name you want to.”
“I think I know what to say,” she told them with a quick nodding of her head. “I’ll write the letter to-night and mail it early to-morrow morning.’’
After they left the telephone exchange, Gracie cried for a long time. Late that night she wrote the letter to Ray Buffin, and the next morning when she left the exchange, she mailed it at the post office.

Guy Hodge and Ralph Barnhill were waiting in the post office that afternoon at four o’clock when Ray came in and stood in front of his box. By that time a larger crowd than usual had gathered in the post office. Everybody knew what to expect. There were knowing winks and nudges, but scarcely a word was said.
Sid Stoney had not even begun to sort the mail that had arrived on the bus from New Orleans when Ray saw a letter in his box. His eyes blinking unbelievingly he stared at it through the little glass window for a long time. After that, with shaking hand, he opened the box and took out the pink envelope. Turning it over in his hands, he went to the corner of the room to read it.
His hands shaking more than ever, he opened the pink envelope. As he began to read, the sadness of his long thin face disappeared and he began to smile. After reading the letter the first time, he began reading it a second time, his lips slowly and carefully forming the sounds of the words. When he finished, his eyes were blinking mistily and he quickly drew the palm of his hand over his face. Then,
suddenly stuffing the letter into his pocket, he dashed out of the post office before anybody had a chance to say any thing to him or stop him.
As soon as they realised what had happened, Guy and Ralph ran after him, calling to him to come back to the post office. Instead, Ray hurried around the corner to the telephone exchange. Ordinarily, Gracie Brooks did not come to
work until six o’clock in the evening, but this time she had been there since four o’clock. When Guy and Ralph ran in side Gracie was seated at the switchboard and Ray Buffin was standing close beside her with the widest and happiest smile they had ever seen on his face.

Evidently neither of them had yet said a word to the other, and apparently they were too excited to realise that Guy and Ralph were in the office watching them. Presently, Ray reached down and took Gracie’s hand in his. She responded at once by snuggling her head against him while tears rolled down her cheeks.
Guy and Ralph came out of the telephone exchange. Not a word was said until they got to the street.
“How in the world did that joke turn out like it did?” Ralph asked, puzzled, as they walked back towards the post office. “I thought sure we were going to have a big laugh at Ray Buffin. I don’t understand what happened. Do you suppose Grace Brooks signed her own name by mistake?”
“She signed her own name, all right, and it’s my guess it wasn’t by mistake, either,” Guy said. “It looks to me like both of them have wanted to get married for a long time but were too bashful to do anything about it. I’ll bet they never would have done anything about it if we hadn’t thought up this letter-writing joke.”
“I don’t mind it,” Ralph said, shaking his head to himself, “but the next time we plan a joke, let’s be sure of it. We don’t want people to start saying we cannot play a good joke any more.”

“Somehow or other,” Guy said, “I’m sort of glad it turned out the way it did. Every time I see Ray Buffin after this, I can think to myself that I did one good deed in life, because from now on nobody will have to look at that sad face of his in the post office every day. Besides, if it hadn’t been for us, he never would have got the letter he must have been waiting for most of his life.”

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I. Read the story. Find the situations in which the following expressions were used.	\|	I. Expressions to memorize. Find the situations in which they were used.

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