I had hitherto been travelling incog. Letters from home had been sent in registered packets, addressed to “The Saloon Caravan Wanderer,” to be left at the post-offices till I called for them; but those sent to Edinburgh were promptly sent back to Twyford, because, according to these clever officials, the name was fictitious. It was really no more so than the name of a yacht is, the Wanderer being my land-yacht.
When a clerk showed me a letter from some bigwig anent the matter, I indignantly dashed my pen through the word “fictitious.” You should have seen that clerk’s face then. I believe his hair stood on end, and his eyes stuck out on stalks.
“Man!” he cried, “you’ve done a bonnie thing noo. I’ll say no more to you. You must go round and speak to that gentleman.”
As that gentleman was at one end of the counter and this gentleman at the other, this gentleman refused to budge, albeit he had done “a bonnie thing.” For, I reasoned, this gentleman represents the British public, that gentleman is but a servant of the said British public.
So it ended. But was it not hard to be refused my letters—not to be able to learn for another week whether my aged father was alive, whether my little Inie’s cough was better, or Kenneth had cut that other tooth?
If further proof were needed that Midlothian is a smart country, it was forthcoming at Corstorphine, a pretty village some miles from Edina. I had unlimbered on the side of the road, not in any one’s way. Soon after there was a rat-tat-tat-tat at my back door—no modest single knock, mind you.
A policeman—tall, wiry, solemn, determined.
“Ye maun moove on. Ye canna be allooed to obstruct the thoro’fare.”
I told the fellow, as civilly as I could, to go about his business, that my horses should feed and my own dinner be cooked and eaten ere I “mooved on.”