"Ay, theer, ye 'll 'ave to mek use o' yer legs."
"Noo, ah 'm just away an' all, so ye know."
Whereupon, at Pam's invitation, he retired to partake of a cup of smoking tea on the Post Office counter—that reappeared immediately upon his forehead in the form of globules—and doubling up plum-bread and butter by laying it flat on his great outstretched palm and closing his hand upon it, slipped it down his mouth cornerwise, as easily as posting a letter. Every now and then he gave his tea-cup a vigorous stir to shake up the sugar in it, and darting to the door of the Post Office, scanned the street up and down for distant letter-bearers on its horizon.
"Noo then," he cried out at Ding Jackson, lurking onward from afar. "'Ow much longer div ye think ah s'll wait for ye?"
"Ah don't know, an' ah don't care," Dingwall Jackson responded irreverently.
"Don't ye?" shouted the postman, with sudden ire.
"Naw," Ding Jackson shouted back at him, going better. "Ah 've no letters."
"Ay, bud ye 'll know if ah get 'old on ye," James Maskill cried threateningly, shaking a doubled fist like a great red brick at him, and as heavy. "An' ye 'll care too. Ye dommed saucy young divvle."
"Gie ower sweerin'," cried Ding Jackson, as loudly as he could. He almost twisted his interior in the effort to publish the postman's offence throughout Ullbrig. "Feythur, James Maskill 's sweerin' at me."
"Ay, ye sewd try an' curb your tongue, Jaames," the postmaster counselled him as he scowled back to his teacup. "It's a 'asty member wi' all on us, an' stan's i' need o' bridlin'."