‘Well done! If I baint so weak that I can’t see the clouds—much less letters. Guide my soul, if so be anybody should tell the Queen’s postmaster-general of me! The whole story will have to go through Parliament House, and I shall be high-treasoned—as safe as houses—and be fined, and who’ll pay for a poor martel! O, ‘tis a world!’
‘Trust in the Lord—he’ll pay.’
‘He pay a b’lieve! why should he when he didn’t drink the drink? He pay a b’lieve! D’ye think the man’s a fool?’
‘Well, well, I had no intention of hurting your feelings—but how was I to know you were so sensitive?’
‘True—you were not to know I was so sensitive. Here’s a caddle wi’ these letters! Guide my soul, what will Billy do!’
Manston offered his services.
‘They are to be divided,’ the man said.
‘How?’ said Manston.
‘These, for the village, to be carried on into it: any for the vicarage or vicarage farm must be left in the box of the gate-post just here. There’s none for the vicarage-house this mornen, but I saw when I started there was one for the clerk o’ works at the new church. This is it, isn’t it?’
He held up a large envelope, directed in Edward Springrove’s handwriting:—