"If you please," I said, "is there a shop near here where they sell stamps?"
The grave young gentleman smiled.
"Postage stamps, do you mean?" he said.
"Yes," I replied, "I only want one. I have a penny."
"They are to be got at the post-office in —— Street—a very little way from this, on the right-hand side," said the young man. He turned away as he spoke as much as to say "That is all I can do for you. Now you had better go away."
I stood for a moment uncertain what to do—the boys looked up at me in perplexity and trouble. It was terrible to think of having to go still further along that crowded street, and having to ask again for the post-office. I was neither shy nor frightened for myself, but I felt the responsibility of the boys painfully. Supposing some harm happened to them, supposing they got run over or lost—supposing even that it was so late when we got home that we had been missed and that Uncle Geoff and Mrs. Partridge were to scold us fearfully—I should feel, I knew I should—that it had been all my fault. I was half thinking of asking the grave young man if the boys might stay in the shop while I ran on to the post-office alone (only I felt sure Tom would greatly object to such an arrangement), when another person—a grave-looking gentleman too, but a good deal older and less hurried, it seemed to me, than the other—stopped, as he was crossing from one counter to another, and spoke to us. His voice was very kind, and somehow I felt sure he had little boys and girls of his own at home.
"Has any one attended to you, my dear?"
"Has any one attended to you, my dear?" he said.