"Mix what?" Pam asked.
"Ah 've 'ad one ... o' t' road," he explained. "Bud 'appen yon barril 's thruff by noo. She wor drawin' a bit thick last time ye asked me."
"Ye 're best wi'oot, Jaames Maskill," came the voice of Emma Morland, from the interior of the Post Office, "... this time o' mornin'."
"Ay, ah think ah 'm, mebbe," said the postman, plunging hands into his pockets and screwing up his mouth for a broken-hearted whistle.
"Gie 'im a glass o' lemonade," said the voice again. "'E can 'ave that an' welcome."
"Will you have a glass of lemonade?" asked Pam.
"Ay, ah 'm willin', if it suits ye," the postman acknowledged.
A hand appeared at the inner door holding a lemonade bottle and a thick tumbler (the latter looking as though it had once held marmalade in Fussitter's window), and a second hand, when Pam had possessed herself of these, held forth a boxwood lemonade opener.
The postman drew forth the effervescing liquid thirstily into his profounds, with his red chin mounting up step by step as though it were going upstairs, and a great fizzling sound from within as if he were a red-hot man, and let the glass rest on inverted end upon his lips for a space, to make sure it had yielded its last drop, and set it down on the counter with a great breathed "Ah!" of appreciation, holding his mouth open while the sparkles needled his inside.
"Noo let 's away," he said, "... or we s'll be 'avin' old Tankard prawtestin' us to Goovinment agen."