THE POST-GIRL

BY

EDWARD C. BOOTH

New York
GROSSET & DUNLAP
Publishers

Copyright, 1908, by
THE CENTURY Co.

Published, June, 1908

THE POST-GIRL

CHAPTER I

When summer comes Mrs. Gatheredge talks of repapering her parlor, and Ginger gets him ready to sleep in the scullery at a night's notice, but the letting of lodgings is not a staple industry in this quarter of Yorkshire, and folks would fare ill on it who knew nothing of the art of keeping a pig or growing their own potatoes in the bit of garden at the back.

Visitors pass through, indeed, in large enough numbers between seed- and harvest-time (mostly by bicycle), staring their way round the village from house to house. But all that ever develops is an occasional request for a cup of water—in the hope, no doubt, that we may give them milk—or an interrogation as to the road to somewhere else. Steg's reply to the latter, through a long succession of summers, has waxed into a set formula, which he prepares with all the exactness of a prescription: