CAN I NEVER SEND OFF THIS PARCEL?
Then in fear and trembling I made for the post-office again.
My tormentor appeared to be appeased. Ah yes, at last the letters were all right.
“Uitstekend, mijnheer,” he said. And he quite beamed upon me.
“Nu de formulieren, asjeblieft.”
Oh, the papers, of course! I had quite forgotten about them by this time. Fortunately I hadn’t lost them; so I handed him both documents. He took them up, smiling benignly on the foreigner who had managed to surmount so many obstacles; but alas! his satisfaction—and mine too—were of short duration. He frowned impatiently at the brown paper. “Nee, mijnheer,” he growled; “niet goed!” And he pushed papers and package and all to me, as if he was mortally offended.
“Hé, mijnheer!” I ejaculated—“Hoe is dat? Kom toch! Wat is niet goed?”
“Geen zegel! geen zegel!” he thundered magisterially, with a contemptuous toss of the brown formulier in my direction. Like a shot he turned to a schoolboy of fourteen at my elbow, (who had meantime been studying my writings and reading them audibly to his companions)—“En U?” he enquired.
A LONG CUE.
I felt dismissed, if not disgraced! And no investigation of my belongings could throw any light on my blunder. The brown manuscript was at fault I knew; so, as the best thing possible I entered a solemn declaration, opposite the hiernevens, “een pakje met 7 zegels”, and booked the same remark on a convenient spot on the white paper. This done, I returned to the charge promptly, but with much inward apprehension. The cue of people pushing forward to buy stamps and send things away and generally to transact business, had grown to a long line nearly to the door. Humbly I took my place at the end of the file, about twenty minutes off the ambtenaar. It wasn’t quite twenty minutes, but it felt longer; for every now and then the ambtenaar glanced up, when he had served a customer, and his eye invariably fell on me. It was a long-drawn-out agony, that approach to the loket, under official inspection, so to speak; and I had plenty of time to register a silent bet with myself that the authorities were not done with me. They’d be sure to give me another journey to the stationer’s.