Chapter Eighteen

“How do you like my new tie?” Mr. Keogh wanted to know.

“Well,” I said, “it is different.” It was blue and red and yellow in a sort of squiggly pattern. It would be good for Saturdays.

“I’ll tell you frankly, Mr. Keogh,” Al said, “it doesn’t do too much for you. If you know what I mean.”

Mr. Keogh looked down at his tie. “Indeed I do know, Al. Indeed I do. And I’m a man who needs all the help he can get.”

He winked at us and we had a good laugh. We are all friends.

“Mr. Keogh,” I said, “I thought you might be interested to know that Al and I are practically finished making bookshelves. At home, I mean. Mr. Richards, who is our assistant superintendent, is teaching us on Saturday mornings. We are coming along pretty good.”

“That’s fine. I’m glad to hear it. How are you coming along on your social-studies project? Just as good?”

Al and I are doing a project on different countries for social studies.

“Mr. Keogh, I have written to all the embassies and information bureaus of all the places I want to find out more about, and I have probably got more stuff in the mail than any other kid in our class,” I said.

“How’d you manage that?” Mr. Keogh asked.

“Well,” I said, “my father tipped me off. He told me if I wrote for information and just signed ‘Miss’ they would think I was only some little upstart kid. Whereas, if I signed my letter ‘Mrs.’ or put ‘Mrs.’ on the back of the envelope, they would think maybe I would take a trip to their country with all my children and my husband and they would make a lot of money from me. So I put ‘Mrs.’ on the back of the envelope and they sent me everything in sight.”

“Excellent,” Mr. Keogh said. “Tell your father I think he is a very clever man. The only thing is—and he straightened his new tie—“the mailman must be a little perplexed. When he has all this mail addressed to ‘Mrs.’ and he gets a load of you, he must wonder what monkey business is going on.”

“Oh,” I said, “we don’t see our mailman all that much. He only really comes around at Christmas time. He starts bringing this big load of mail just about a week or so before Christmas. His feet hurt something terrible but he still brings this mail right to our door instead of dropping it in the box.”

“Hm,” Mr. Keogh said, “we must share the same mailman.”