"Please."
Two penny stamps were pushed across and two pennies taken up.
"And now two sheets of paper and two envelopes, please, miss," went on Frank, encouraged. He thought himself foolish to be angry. Miss Jamieson uttered a short laugh and glanced at Miss Mills. Miss Mills pursed her lips together and took up her pen once more.
"Will you be good enough to give me what I ask for, at once, please?"
The whole of Frank blazed in this small sentence: but Miss Mills was equal to it.
"You ought to know better," she said, "than to come asking for such things here! Taking up a lot of time like that."
"You don't keep them?"
Miss Mills uttered a small sound. Miss Jamieson tittered.
"Shops are the proper places for writing-paper. This is a post-office."
Words cannot picture the superb high breeding shown in this utterance. Frank should have understood that he had been guilty of gross impertinence in asking such things of Miss Mills; it was treating her almost as a shop-girl. But he was extremely angry by now.