"Why not take it yourself?" he said; "it will prevent any more muddle. There is no hurry I shall be quite happy sitting here."
She looked at him in surprise, for he had never shown himself so practical as to-day, but there seemed no reason why she should not leave him, so with a word of assent she got down and entered the door.
The front room of the low building served as the shop, and displayed a varied assortment of wares in most haphazard fashion. Along the rafters sides of bacon and farthing dips hung in close proximity to stout corduroys and wooden clogs, while in the corner a child's wicker cradle formed an excellent receptacle for the last batch of crisp brown loaves. The narrow counter was piled high with biscuit-tins, bottles of sweets, patent medicines and articles of clothing, arranged in a sort of orderly confusion.
There was no one to be seen, and Philippa rapped sharply on the wooden counter two or three times. At last an old woman appeared, a cherry-cheeked old dame with her white hair drawn neatly into the modest shelter of a black chenille net. The girl explained her errand, and was at once invited to step "into the back."
Making her way through a lane of sacks she reached the inner room, where all the business connected with His Majesty's mails was transacted.
"'Tis my daughter, miss, as sees to the post an' telegraph, but she's been druv to go to bed—wonderful queer she were—took bad about noon; but I make no doubt but what she'll be better by and by. Was it a telegram you wished to send? Then I'll call her. If it had been jus' a matter of a few stamps now, I could have settled that nicely, or one of them orders; but that there ticking machine, that's past me. But Maggie, she's wonderful quick at it. Stayed about as long as she could too, with terrible pains in her——"
Philippa broke the stream of the good woman's confidence.
"It will do very well later," she said, "when your daughter is better. She can send it when she comes down. I am sorry she is ill, but don't disturb her for me. I will just write out the words more clearly, as I understand there has been a doubt about the spelling."
She printed the words plainly on a fresh form and handed it to the old woman, who counted them slowly and laboriously with the stump of a pencil. "Eighteen words," she said. "That'll be a matter o' ninepence, I reckon."
"Oh no," corrected Philippa. "It is to St. Petersburg, in Russia. It will cost much more than that."