Page:In the dozy hours, and other papers.djvu/62

on the way; and his mother, growing anxious, or perhaps desiring her mail, followed him to know what was the matter. She met him at the post-office door, and seeing in the barrow an envelope directed to herself, she rashly picked it up and opened it. Edwin promptly "raised a vehement cry of protest." That letter, like all the rest, had been given to him to carry, and no one else was privileged to touch it. Swiftly and repentantly his mother returned the unfortunate missive, but in vain. "The wound was too deep, and he continued to cry 'Mamma, you ought not to have done it!' over and over again between his sobs." In fact he "refused to be comforted,"—comforted!—"and so was taken home as best he could be, and laid tenderly and lovingly in bed. After sleeping away the sharpness of sorrow and disappointment, and consequent exhaustion, the matter could be talked over; but while he was so tired, and keenly smarting under the sense of injustice done him, every word added fuel to the flame. … His possessions had been taken away from him by sheer force, before which he was helpless. That his indignation was not appeased by put-