I follow up that blow with my green British Museum ticket, as tattered as a flag in a knight's chapel.
“You'll get found out,” he says, with my documents in his hand. “You've got your thumbs. You'll be measured. They'll refer to the central registers, and there you'll be!”
“That's just it,” I say, “we sha'n't be.”
He reflects. “It's a queer sort of joke for you two men to play,” he decides, handing me back my documents.
“It's no joke at all,” I say, replacing them in my pocket-book.
The post-mistress intervenes. “What would you advise me to do?”
“No money?” he asks.
“No.”
He makes some suggestions. “Frankly,” he says, “I think you have escaped from some island. How you got so far as here I can't imagine, or what you think you'll do.... But anyhow, there's the stuff for your thumbs.”
He points to the thumb-marking apparatus and turns to attend to his own business.