ALLEMAAL ZEGELS.
And so they did! Without deigning to look at my official guarantee about the 7 zegels the Postal Radamanthus began with vitriolic self-restraint: “Ik—heb—U—gezegd. Er—moet—een zegel—op.”
“Oh mynheer!” I burst out in hot indignation, “Hoe kunt U dat zeggen? Kijk! Het is allemaal zegels!” And indeed the parcel was almost completely coated with wax.
A spasm passed over his face, and he controlled himself by a severe effort. “Ik—heb—U—al—meer maal—gezegd”—His voice rose higher and higher, and he bit off the words as if they were poison. “Hier moet de afdruk van het zegel komen.—Hierr!” And he waved a white hand over the coloured formulier and finally dropped his thumb, like a pancake, over a lozenge-shaped diagram filled with Dutch and French words. “Hier!!”
Ah yes! Just so. Now I saw what was wanted, and I departed speechlessly to the sealing-wax-shop again.
By this time I was quite domesticated there: so I took a good rest and then put on a formidable seal on the lozenge. In half an hour I was back again on the premises of Rhadamanthus, at the end of another cue, wondering if I could reach the loket before it would be closed for the day. You see all that marching to and fro, and arguing with officials, and cooking sealing-wax, and waiting your turn in a crowd, swallows up an immensity of time.
ART CRITICISM REJECTED.
At last I was before the little window and handed in the documents. “Ja, ja. De zegel is in orde!”
“In orde, mijnheer!” he added with a cherubic smile. “Best.” “Maar—maar wat hebben we hier?” he muttered as he perused my other remarks on the papers. He appeared somewhat nonplussed by my opmerkingen as to the contents of package, and ran his pen through all my art criticisms; then suddenly said roughly. “Heet U Rebecca O’Neill?”