The small shop containing the post-office at Duck Brook was kept by Mrs.
Sym, who sold sweetstuff, also tapes and cottons. Young Sym, her son, a growing youth, delivered the letters, which were brought in by a mail-cart. She was a clean, tidy woman of middle age, never seen out of a muslin cap with a wide border and a black bow, a handkerchief crossed over her shoulders, and a checked ap.r.o.n.
Oliver, of lighter step than his father, reached the post-office first and tumbled his portion of the letters into the box placed in the window to receive them. The next moment Mr. Preen put his in also, together with the letter addressed to Mr. Paul.
"We are too late," observed Oliver. "I thought we should be."
"Eh?" exclaimed Mr. Preen, in surprise, as he turned round. "Too late!
Why how can the afternoon have gone on?" he continued, his eyes falling on the clock of the little grey church which stood beyond the triangle of houses, the hands of which were pointing to a quarter past five.
"If you knew it was so late why did you not say so?" he asked sharply of his son.
"I was not sure until I saw the clock; I only thought it must be late by the time we had been at work," replied Oliver.
"I might have sent you over with that letter as you suggested, had I known it would not go to-night. I wonder whether Dame Sym would give it back to me."
He dived down the two steps into the shop as he spoke, Oliver following.
Dame Sym--so Duck Brook called her--stood knitting behind the little counter, an employment she took up at spare moments.
"Mrs. Sym, I"ve just put some letters into the box, not perceiving that it was past five o"clock," began Mr. Preen, civilly. "I suppose they"ll not go to-night?"
"Can"t, sir," replied the humble post-mistress. "The bag"s made up."
"There"s one letter that will hardly bear delay. It is for Mr. Paul of Islip. If you can return it me out of the box I will send it over by hand at once; my son will take it."
"But it is not possible, sir. Once a letter is put into the box I dare not give it back again," remonstrated Mrs. Sym, gazing amiably at Mr.
Preen through her spectacles, whose round gla.s.ses had a trick of glistening when at right angles with the light.
"You might stretch a point for once, to oblige me," returned Mr. Preen, fretfully.
"And I"m sure I"d not need to be pressed to do it, sir, if I could," she cried in her hearty way. "But I dare not break the rules, sir; I might lose my place. Our orders are not to open the receiving box until the time for making-up, or give a letter back on any pretence whatever."
Mr. Preen saw that further argument would be useless. She was a kindly, obliging old body, but upright to the last degree in all that related to her place. Anything that she believed (right or wrong) might not be done she stuck to.
"Obstinate as the grave," muttered he.
Dame Sym did not hear; she had turned away to serve a child who came in for some toffee. Mr. Preen waited.
"When will the letter go?" he asked, as the child went out.
"By to-morrow"s day mail, sir. It will be delivered at Islip--I think you said Islip, Mr. Preen--about half-past four, or so, in the afternoon."
"Is the delay of much consequence, sir?" inquired Oliver, as he and his father turned out of the shop.
"No," said Mr. Preen. "Only I hate letters to be delayed uselessly in the post."
Tea was waiting when they got in. A mutton chop was served with it for Mr. Preen, as he had lost his dinner. Jane ran downstairs, drank a cup of tea in haste, and ran back again. She had been busy in her bedroom all day, smartening-up a dress. A picnic was to be held on Thursday, the next day but one; Jane and Oliver were invited to it, and Jane wanted to look as well as other girls.
After tea Oliver sat for ever so long at the open window, reading the _Worcester Journal_. He then strolled out to the Inlets, sauntered beside the brook, and presently threw himself listlessly upon one of the benches facing it. The sun shone right upon his face there, so he tilted his straw hat over his eyes. That did not do, and he moved to another bench which the trees shaded. He often felt lonely and weary now; this evening especially so; even Jane was not with him.
His thoughts turned to Emma Paul; and a glow, bright as the declining sun rays, shot up in his heart. As long as _she_ filled it, he could not be all gloom.
"If I had means to justify it I should speak to her," mused he--as he had told himself forty times over, and forty more. "But when a fellow has no fortune, and no prospect of fortune; when it may be seen by no end of odd signs and tokens that he has not so much as a silver coin in his pocket, how can he ask a girl the one great question of life? Old Paul would send me to the right-about."
He leaned his head sideways for a few minutes against the trunk of a tree, gazing at the reddening sky through the green tracery of the waving boughs; and fell to musing again.
"If she loved me as I love her, she would be glad to wait on as things are, hoping for better times. Lovers, who are truly attached to each other, do wait for years and years, and are all the happier for it.
Sometimes I feel inclined to enlist in a crack regiment. The worst of it is that a fellow rarely rises from the ranks in England to position and honour, as he does in France; they manage things better over there.
If old Uncle Edward would only open his purse-strings and buy me a commission, I might---- Halloa!"
A burst of girlish laughter, and a pair of girlish arms, flung round his neck from behind, disturbed Oliver"s castles-in-the-air. Jane came round and sat down beside him. "I thought I should find you here, Oliver," she said.
"Frock finished, Janey?"
"Finished! why no," she exclaimed. "It will hardly be finished by this time to-morrow."
"Why, how idle you must have been!"
"Idle? You don"t understand things, or the time it takes to make an old frock into a new one. A dressmaker might have done it in a day, but I"m not a dressmaker, you know, Oliver."
"Is it a silk gown?"
"It is a mousseline-de-laine, if you chance to be acquainted with that material," answered Janey. "It was very pretty when it was new: pale pink and lilac blossoms upon a cream ground. But it has been washed, and that has made it shrink, and it has to be let out everywhere and lengthened, and the faded silk tr.i.m.m.i.n.g has to be turned, and--oh, ever so much work. And now, I daresay you are as wise as you were before, Oliver."
"I"ve heard of washed-out dresses," remarked Oliver. "They look like rags, don"t they?"
"Some may. Mine won"t. It has washed like a pocket-handkerchief, and it looks as good as new."
"Wish my coats would wash," said Oliver. "They are getting shabby, and I want some new ones."
Not having any consolation to administer in regard to the coats, Jane did not take up the subject. "What have you been doing all day, Oliver?"
she asked.
"Airing my patience in that blessed b.u.t.tery," replied he. "Never stirred out of it at all, except for dinner."
"I thought you wanted to get over to Islip this afternoon."
"I might want to get over to the North Pole, and be none the nearer to it. MacEveril was bound for some place a mile or two across fields this afternoon, on business for the office, and I promised to go over to walk with him. Promises, though, are like pie-crust, Janey: made to be broken."
Jane nodded a.s.sent. "And a promise which you are obliged to break is sure to be one you particularly want to keep. I wish I had a pair of new gloves, Oliver. Pale grey."
"I wish I had half-a-dozen new pairs, for the matter of that. Just look at those little minnows, leaping in the water. How pretty they are!"
He went to the edge of the brook and stood looking down at the small fry. Jane followed. Then they walked about in the Inlets, then sat down again and watched the sunset; and so the evening wore away until they went home.
Jane was shut up again the following day, busy with her dress; Oliver, as usual, was in the b.u.t.tery with his father. At twelve o"clock Mr.
Preen prepared to go out to keep an appointment at Evesham, leaving Oliver a lot of work to do, very much to his aggravation.