"Yes, but who to? That's the point. Our George!"
To me there did not seem much in this to cause a sensation, but it did. Question and answer flew backwards and forwards as thick as reminiscences at a regimental dinner.
"Not young George?"
"Yes, old George. We had a letter from him last week. First we'd heard for six years."
"Lordy, lordy," said the post-mistress, "it only seems yesterday that he went away. I remember——" and she proved it by doing so for ten minutes with a volubility that would have made the fortune of a patter comedian. At the first sign of a pause I found the courage to ask for my stamps, but quite in vain. The conversation was only getting its second wind.
"Young George, to be sure! And how is he? Tell me all about him."
I gathered that George was in the best of health and in America, was unmarried and umpired out in a recent baseball match and wanted——" ["A dozen stamps, please." This from me.] a photograph of the old people and his brothers and sisters. From this the transition was easy to an uncle of the post-mistress's who went——" ["A dozen stamps.">[—to foreign parts. He always was a rolling stone, he was. Never gathered no moss. On the other hand, there were no flies on him. Did very well for himself, he did, and when he died——"
But it was at this point that the moisture from the margarine cask against which I had been leaning began to make its presence felt, and, stampless, I left the shop.
At the edge of the village I met our policeman.
"Go quickly," I implored him; "there's a hold-up at the post-office."