"But I'll never get it—out of seven hundred and eighty-two girls. I went some awful howlers, I know."
"P'r'aps the others did too," suggested Ronnie.
"I'm afraid Mums will mind if I fail," Joey said. "Of course she'll pretend she doesn't, and say all she cares about is my trying—but she won't take us in with her dearness."
"'Course not; but you'll have to let her think she does," Ronnie announced, from the depths of past experience, and then he and Joey were silent while they plodded round the shoulder of the hill, and dropped down into Crumach. Ahead Gavin could be heard gaily discoursing to Kirsty and Bingo on the Homeric exploits of Winchester "men"; but then it was different for Gavin. He had won his scholarship.
Either the shoe-laces had taken longer than the children had expected, or the gold hunting-watch had not been entirely reliable, for it was fully four o'clock when they turned at last into the main street of Crumach. Gavin stopped and waited for the other two.
"The post'll be in. We'd better go to Luckie Jean's first, and get Mums' things after."
As a matter of fact one got a good many of the "things" at Luckie Jean's, though Mums had a certain odd favouritism for the newly established grocer at Pettalva, who sent a cart in twice a week to Crumach and had biscuits that were really fresh. But the family plumped to a man for Luckie Jean. True, the fingers with which she ladled out your provisions were snuff-stained and not over-well acquainted with soap and water; but the recesses of her shop were so dark and mysterious, her goods so various and unexpected, and, best of all, her stories were so thrilling that no ordinary shopman who drove a cart could dream of comparing with her. The family trooped joyfully in a body to Luckie Jean's forthwith.
She had the post office, not so much on account of her competence, as because hers was, at the time the postal authorities had decided to open a branch at Crumach, the one and only shop there. Later, when a polite gentleman from Pettalva, rendered desperate by complaints from the English people who came up for the shooting, suggested politely to Luckie Jean the advisability of putting the charge into the hands of a younger woman, he thought himself fortunate to escape with his eyes still intact in his head. Luckie Jean, half blind and wholly ignorant as to all but local names and places, kept the post office; and English visitors went on adding to the national revenue by writing unavailing letters of bitter complaint.
It was this redoubtable old woman who looked up fiercely over her horn-rimmed spectacles as the young Grahams trooped in a body into the odd-and-end shop.
She was bending over the post-bag as it lay on the counter, sorting the letters and papers into little heaps, and keeping up a vigorous undercurrent of grumbling all the time.