Chapter Two (part b)

He reached into the pocket of his bathrobe for his reading glasses and pulled out a kaiser roll instead. He put it down on the whatnot table and continued to rummage. Next he found a jar of mayonnaise, some lettuce, a tomato, a large pot of mustard and a small hot salami. Moffat shook his head as he put them all down on the table.

"I want to read, not eat," he muttered to his pocket.

Jennifer was very perplexed. She didn't know what to expect next, but whatever it was she didn't see how an ordinary pocket of an ordinary robe could be big enough to hold all that stuff. She looked over to see what her mother would say, but she wasn't paying any attention at all. She was smiling happily at Uncle Walter's letter and had missed the amazing things that were happening all around her.

Jennifer watched carefully as her great-grandfather continued to look through his pocket. She hoped he would take out something even her mother couldn't miss: a hundred dollar bill perhaps, or at least a fifty. But as it turned out the only thing he produced this time was a pair of old reading glasses. He put them on, held out his hand and Mrs. Jones handed over the envelope.

"Postmarked a week ago Wednesday," she observed.

"I open all my mail eventually," Moffat assured her.

He pushed aside the mittens on the wooden bench, sat down and opened the envelope. As he began to read the letter a number of rabbits came hopping down the stairs. Most of them stopped at the whatnot table to nibble the lettuce before going off down the hall, but one in particular hopped up on the bench to take a taste of the envelope instead. He chewed the stamp reflectively for a bit, then he yawned and stretched and scratched his head, then he groomed his face and looked the room over for a suitable place to nap. A few moments later he hopped into the pocket of the baseball mitt. When he finally curled up and went to sleep he looked a bit like a baseball with ears, but not very much.

Mrs. Jones was looking at the letter over Moffat's shoulder and she didn't see the rabbits at all. Jennifer sighed. She realized her mother had just missed something extremely amazing again.