Post Haste (Annotated) - Robert Michael Ballantyne - E-Book

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Robert Michael Ballantyne

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Beschreibung

‘Post Haste’ is a fascinating story by prolific children's author R.M. Ballantyne, set during the early days of the general post office. Still in its infancy, sending a letter through the post office was not yet a guarantee of its’ safe arrival. When several highly sensitive and important letters to the same addressee all go missing however, is there more to it than meets the eye? Philip and his sister Mary Maylands, along with their friend George Aspel are soon on the case, as they attempt to get to the bottom of the mystery.

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Table of Contents

Post Haste

A Hero and His Worshipper.

Tells of Woman’s Work and some of Woman’s Ways.

Brilliant Prospects.

The Royal Mail Steamer.

Wreck and Rescue.

Treats of Poverty, Pride, and Fidelity.

Phil Begins Life, and Makes a Friend.

Downward—Deeper and Deeper.

Mr Blurt and George Aspel in Peculiar Circumstances.

A Mystery Cleared Up.

The Letter-Carrier Goes His Rounds, Aids a Little Girl, and Overwhelms a Lady Statistically.

In Which a Bosom Friend is Introduced, Rural Felicity is Enlarged on, and Deep Plans are Laid.

Miss Lillycrop Gets a Series of Surprises.

Formation of the Pegaway Literary Association and Other Matters.

George Aspel Receives Various Visitors at the Ornithological Shop, and is Called to Vigorous Action.

Begins with Juvenile Flirtation, and Ends with Canine Cremation.

Tottie and Mrs Bones in Difficulty.

Business Interfered with in a Remarkable Manner.

Deep-Laid Plans for Checkmating Mr Bones.

The Post of the Olden Time.

Tells of a Series of Terrible Surprises.

Shows How One Thing Leads to Another, and so on.

The Turning-Point.

Plans and Counter Plans.

Light Shining in Dark Places.

Tells of a Sham Fight and a Real Battle.

The Greatest Battle of All.

The Storming of Rocky Cottage and Other Matters.

Describes an Interview and a Rencontre.

The Last.

BIOGRAPHY

Robert Michael Ballantyne (24 April 1825 – 8 February 1894) was a Scottish author of juvenile fiction who wrote more than 100 books. He was also an accomplished artist, and exhibited some of his water-colours at the Royal Scottish Academy.

EARLY LIFE

Ballantyne was born in Edinburgh on 24 April 1825, the ninth of ten children and the youngest son, to Alexander Thomson Ballantyne (1776–1847) and his wife Anne (1786–1855). Alexander was a newspaper editor and printer in the family firm of "Ballantyne & Co" based at Paul's Works on the Canongate, and Robert's uncle James Ballantyne (1772–1833) was the printer for Scottish author Sir Walter Scott. In 1832-33 the family is known to have been living at 20 Fettes Row, in the northern New Town of Edinburgh. A UK-wide banking crisis in 1825 resulted in the collapse of the Ballantyne printing business the following year with debts of £130,000, which led to a decline in the family's fortunes.

Ballantyne went to Canada aged 16, and spent five years working for the Hudson's Bay Company. He traded with the local Native Americans for furs, which required him to travel by canoe and sleigh to the areas occupied by the modern-day provinces of Manitoba, Ontario, and Quebec, experiences that formed the basis of his novel Snowflakes and Sunbeams (1856). His longing for family and home during that period impressed him to start writing letters to his mother. Ballantyne recalled in his autobiographical Personal Reminiscences in Book Making (1893) that "To this long-letter writing I attribute whatever small amount of facility in composition I may have acquired."

WRITING CAREER

In 1847 Ballantyne returned to Scotland to discover that his father had died. He published his first book the following year, Hudson's Bay: or, Life in the Wilds of North America, and for some time was employed by the publishers Messrs Constable. In 1856 he gave up business to focus on his literary career, and began the series of adventure stories for the young with which his name is popularly associated.

The Young Fur-Traders (1856), The Coral Island (1857), The World of Ice (1859), Ungava: a Tale of Eskimo Land (1857), The Dog Crusoe (1860), The Lighthouse (1865), Fighting the Whales (1866), Deep Down (1868), The Pirate City (1874), Erling the Bold (1869), The Settler and the Savage (1877), and more than 100 other books followed in regular succession, his rule being to write as far as possible from personal knowledge of the scenes he described. The Gorilla Hunters. A tale of the wilds of Africa (1861) shares three characters with The Coral Island: Jack Martin, Ralph Rover and Peterkin Gay. Here Ballantyne relied factually on Paul du Chaillu's Exploration in Equatorial Guinea, which had appeared early in the same year.

The Coral Island is the most popular of the Ballantyne novels still read and remembered today, but because of one mistake he made in that book, in which he gave an incorrect thickness of coconut shells, he subsequently attempted to gain first-hand knowledge of his subject matter. For instance, he spent some time living with the lighthouse keepers at the Bell Rock before writing The Lighthouse, and while researching for Deep Down he spent time with the tin miners of Cornwall.

In 1866 Ballantyne married Jane Grant (c. 1845 – c. 1924), with whom he had three sons and three daughters.

LATER LIFE AND DEATH

Ballantyne spent his later years in Harrow, London, before moving to Italy for the sake of his health, possibly suffering from undiagnosed Ménière's disease. He died in Rome on 8 February 1894, and was buried in the Protestant Cemetery there.

LEGACY

A Greater London Council plaque commemorates Ballantyne at "Duneaves" on Mount Park Road in Harrow.

Table of Contents

Title

About

Preface.

Chapter 1 - A Hero and His Worshipper.

Chapter 2 - Tells of Woman’s Work and some of Woman’s Ways.

Chapter 3 - Brilliant Prospects.

Chapter 4 - The Royal Mail Steamer.

Chapter 5 - Wreck and Rescue.

Chapter 6 - Treats of Poverty, Pride, and Fidelity.

Chapter 7 - Phil Begins Life, and Makes a Friend.

Chapter 8 - Downward—Deeper and Deeper.

Chapter 9 - Mr Blurt and George Aspel in Peculiar Circumstances.

Chapter 10 - A Mystery Cleared Up.

Chapter 11 - The Letter-Carrier Goes His Rounds, Aids a Little Girl, and Overwhelms a Lady Statistically.

Chapter 12 - In Which a Bosom Friend is Introduced, Rural Felicity is Enlarged on, and Deep Plans are Laid.

Chapter 13 - Miss Lillycrop Gets a Series of Surprises.

Chapter 14 - Formation of the Pegaway Literary Association and Other Matters.

Chapter 15 - George Aspel Receives Various Visitors at the Ornithological Shop, and is Called to Vigorous Action.

Chapter 16 - Begins with Juvenile Flirtation, and Ends with Canine Cremation.

Chapter 17 - Tottie and Mrs Bones in Difficulty.

Chapter 18 - Business Interfered with in a Remarkable Manner.

Chapter 19 - Deep-Laid Plans for Checkmating Mr Bones.

Chapter 20 - The Post of the Olden Time.

Chapter 21 - Tells of a Series of Terrible Surprises.

Chapter 22 - Shows How One Thing Leads to Another, and so on.

Chapter 23 - The Turning-Point.

Chapter 24 - Plans and Counter Plans.

Chapter 25 - Light Shining in Dark Places.

Chapter 26 - Tells of a Sham Fight and a Real Battle.

Chapter 27 - The Greatest Battle of All.

Chapter 28 - The Storming of Rocky Cottage and Other Matters.

Chapter 29 - Describes an Interview and a Rencontre.

Chapter 30 - The Last.

Preface.

THIS TALE IS FOUNDED chiefly on facts furnished by the Postmaster-General’s Annual Reports, and gathered, during personal intercourse and investigation, at the General Post-Office of London and its Branches.

It is intended to illustrate—not by any means to exhaust—the subject of postal work, communication, and incident throughout the Kingdom.

I have to render my grateful acknowledgments to Sir Arthur Blackwood; his private secretary, Charles Eden, Esquire; and those other officers of the various Departments who have most kindly afforded me every facility for investigation, and assisted me to much of the information used in the construction of the tale.

If it does not greatly enlighten, I hope that it will at all events interest and amuse the reader.

R.M. Ballantyne.

Chapter

1

A Hero and His Worshipper.

Once upon a time—only once, observe, she did not do it twice—a widow of the name of Maylands went, in a fit of moderate insanity, and took up her abode in a lonely, tumble-down cottage in the west of Ireland.

Mrs Maylands was very poor. She was the widow of an English clergyman, who had left her with a small family and the smallest income that was compatible with that family’s maintenance. Hence the migration to Ireland, where she had been born, and where she hoped to live economically.

The tumble-down cottage was near the sea, not far from a little bay named Howlin Cove. Though little it was a tremendous bay, with mighty cliffs landward, and jutting ledges on either side, and forbidding rocks at the entrance, which waged continual warfare with the great Atlantic billows that rolled into it. The whole place suggested shipwreck and smugglers.

The small family of Mrs Maylands consisted of three babes—so their mother styled them. The eldest babe, Mary—better known as May—was seventeen years of age, and dwelt in London, to which great city she had been tempted by an elderly English cousin, Miss Sarah Lillycrop, who held out as baits a possible situation and a hearty welcome.

The second babe, Philip, was verging on fifteen. Having kicked, crashed, and smashed his way though an uproarious infancy and a stormy childhood, he had become a sedate, earnest, energetic boy, with a slight dash of humour in his spirit, and more than a dash of determination.

The third babe was still a baby. As it plays little or no part in our tale we dismiss it with the remark that it was of the male sex, and was at once the hope, fear, joy and anxiety of its distracted mother. So, too, we may dismiss Miss Madge Stevens, a poor relation, who was worth her weight in gold to the widow, inasmuch as she acted the part of general servant, nurse, mender of the household garments, and recipient of joys and sorrows, all of which duties she fulfilled for love, and for just shelter and sustenance sufficient to keep her affectionate spirit within her rather thin but well-favoured body.

Phil Maylands was a hero-worshipper. At the time when our tale opens he worshipped a youth—the son of a retired naval officer,—who possessed at least some of the qualities that are occasionally found in a hero. George Aspel was daring, genial, enthusiastic, tall, broad-shouldered, active, and young—about twenty. But George had a tendency to dissipation.

His father, who had recently died, had been addicted to what he styled good-fellowship and grog. Knowing his so-called weakness, Captain Aspel had sent his boy to be brought up in the family of the Reverend James Maylands, but some time before the death of that gentleman he had called him home to help to manage the small farm with which he amused his declining years. George and his father amused themselves with it to such an extent that they became bankrupt about the time of the father’s death, and thus the son was left with the world before him and nothing whatever in his pocket except a tobacco-pipe and a corkscrew.

One day Phil met George Aspel taking a ramble and joined him. These two lived near to each other. Indeed, Mrs Maylands had been partly influenced in her choice of a residence by her desire to be near George.

It was a bitterly cold December afternoon. As the friends reached the summit of the grey cliffs, a squall, fresh from the Arctic regions, came sweeping over the angry sea, cutting the foam in flecks from the waves, and whistling, as if in baffled fury, among the opposing crags.

“Isn’t it a grand sight?” said Phil, as they sought shelter under the lee of a projecting rock.

“Glorious! I never look upon that sight,” said Aspel, with flashing eyes, “without wishing that I had lived in the days of the old Vikings.”

The youth traced his descent from the sea-kings of Norway—those tremendous fellows who were wont in days of yore to ravage the shores of the known and unknown world, east and west, north and south, leaving their indelible mark alike on the hot sands of Africa and the icebound rocks of Greenland. As Phil Maylands knew nothing of his own lineage further back than his grandfather, he was free to admire the immense antiquity of his friend’s genealogical tree. Phil was not, however, so completely under the fascination of his hero as to be utterly blind to his faults; but he loved him, and that sufficed to cover them up.

“Sure, they were a wild lot, after all?” he said in a questioning tone, as he looked up at the glowing countenance of his friend, who, with his bold mien, bulky frame, blue eyes, and fair curls, would have made a very creditable Viking indeed, had he lived in the tenth century.

“Of course they were, Phil,” he replied, looking down at his admirer with a smile. “Men could not well be otherwise than wild and warlike in those days; but it was not all ravage and plunder with them. Why, it is to them and to their wise laws that we owe much of the freedom, coupled with the order, that prevails in our happy land; and didn’t they cross the Atlantic Ocean in things little better than herring-boats, without chart or compass, and discover America long before Columbus was born?”

“You don’t mean that?” said Phil, with increased admiration; for the boy was not only smitten by his friend’s physical powers, but by his supposed intellectual attainments.

“Yes, I do mean that,” returned Aspel. “If the Norsemen of old did mischief, as no one can deny, they were undoubtedly grand old scoundrels, and it is certain that they did much good to the world, whether they meant it or not.”

Phil Maylands made no reply, but continued to look meditatively at his friend, until the latter laughed, and asked what he was thinking about.

“It’s thinking I am, what I wouldn’t give if my legs were only as long as yours, George.”

“That they will soon be,” returned George, “if they go on at the rate they’ve been growing of late.”

“That’s a true word, anyhow; but as men’s legs don’t go on growing at the same rate for ever, it’s not much hope I have of mine. No, George, it’s kind of you to encourage me, but the Maylands have ever been a short-legged and long-bodied race. So it’s said. However, it’s some comfort to know that short men are often long-headed, and that many of them get on in the world pretty well.”

“Of course they do,” returned Aspel, “and though they can’t grow long, they never stop short in the race of life. Why, look at Nelson—he was short; and Wellington wasn’t long, and Bonny himself was small in every way except in his intellect—who’s that coming up the hill?”

“It’s Mike Kenny, the postman, I think. I wonder if he has brought a letter from sister May. Mother expects one, I know.”

The man who had attracted their attention was ascending towards them with the slow, steady gait of a practised mountaineer. He was the post-runner of the district. Being a thinly-peopled and remote region, the “runner’s walk” was a pretty extensive one, embracing many a mile of moorland, vale and mountain. He had completed most of his walk at that time, having only one mountain shoulder now between him and the little village of Howlin Cove, where his labours were to terminate for that day.

“Good-evening, Mike,” said George Aspel, as the man approached. “Any letters for me to-night?”

“No, sur, not wan,” answered Mike, with something of a twinkle in his eye; “but I’ve left wan at Rocky Cottage,” he added, turning to Philip Maylands.

“Was it May’s handwriting?” asked the boy eagerly.

“Sure I don’t know for sartin whose hand it is i’ the inside, but it’s not Miss May’s on the cover. Niver a wan in these parts could write like her—copperplate, no less.”

“Come, George, let’s go back,” said Phil, quickly, “we’ve been looking out for a letter for some days past.”

“It’s not exactly a letter, Master Phil,” said the post-runner slowly.

“Ah, then, she’d never put us off with a newspaper,” said Phil.

“No, it’s a telegram,” returned Mike.

Phil Maylands looked thoughtfully at the ground. “A telegram,” he said, “that’s strange. Are ye sure, Mike?”

“Troth am I.”

Without another word the boy started off at a quick walk, followed by his friend and the post-runner. The latter had to diverge at that place to leave a letter at the house of a man named Patrick Grady. Hence, for a short distance, they followed the same road.

Young Maylands would have passed the house, but as Grady was an intimate friend of George Aspel, he agreed to stop just to shake hands.

Patrick Grady was the soul of hospitality. He was not to be put off with a mere shake of the hand, not he—telegrams meant nothing now-a-days, he said, everybody sent them. No cause for alarm. They must stop and have a glass of mountain dew.

Aspel was resolute, however; he would not sit down, though he had no objection to the mountain dew. Accordingly, the bottle was produced, and a full glass was poured out for Aspel, who quaffed off the pure spirit with a free-and-easy toss and smack of the lips, that might have rendered one of the beery old sea-kings envious.

“No, sur, I thank ye,” said Mike, when a similar glass was offered to him.

“What! ye haven’t taken the pledge, have ye?” said Grady.

“No, sur; but I’ve had three glasses already on me walk, an’ that’s as much as I can rightly carry.”

“Nonsense, Mike. You’ve a stiff climb before you—here, take it off.”

The facile postman did take it off without further remonstrance.

“Have a dhrop, Phil?”

“No, thank ee,” said Phil, firmly, but without giving a reason for declining.

Being a boy, he was not pressed to drink, and the party left the house. A short distance farther on the road forked, and here the post-runner turned off to the right, taking the path which led towards the hill whose rugged shoulder he had yet to scale.

Mike Kenny breasted it not only with the energy of youth and strength, but with the additional and artificial energy infused by the spirits, so that, much to his own surprise, his powers began to fail prematurely. Just then a storm of wind and sleet came down from the heights above, and broke with bitter fury in his face. He struggled against it vigorously for a time till he gained a point whence he saw the dark blue sea lashing on the cliffs below. He looked up at the pass which was almost hid by the driving sleet. A feeling of regret and self-condemnation at having so readily given in to Grady was mingled with a strong sense of the duty that he had to discharge as he once more breasted the steep. The bitter cold began to tell on his exhausted frame. In such circumstances a small matter causes a man to stumble. Kenny’s foot caught on something—a root it might be—and he fell headlong into a ditch and was stunned. The cold did its work, and from that ditch he never rose again.

Meanwhile Mr Grady looked out from the window of his cottage upon the gathering storm, expressed some satisfaction that it did not fall to his lot to climb hills on such a day, and comforted himself—though he did not appear to stand in need of special comfort—with another glass of whisky.

George Aspel and Philip Maylands, with their backs to the storm, hurried homewards; the former exulting in the grand—though somewhat disconnected—thoughts infused into his fiery soul by the fire-water he had imbibed, and dreaming of what he would have dared and done had he only been a sea-king of the olden time; the latter meditating somewhat anxiously on the probable nature of his sister’s telegram.

Chapter

2

Tells of Woman’s Work and some of Woman’s Ways.

Many, and varied, and strange, are the duties which woman has to perform in this life—especially in that wonderful and gigantic phase of this life which is comprehended in the word London.

One chill December afternoon there sat in front of a strange-looking instrument a woman—at least she was as nearly a woman as is compatible with the age of seventeen. She was also pretty—not beautiful, observe, but pretty—sparklingly pretty; dark, dimpled, demure and delightful in every way; with a turn-up nose, a laughing eye, and a kindly look.

Her chief duty, from morning to night, consisted in playing with her pretty little fingers on three white pianoforte keys. There were no other keys—black or white—in connection with these three. They stood alone and had no music whatever in them—nothing but a click. Nevertheless this young woman, whose name was May Maylands, played on them with a constancy and a deft rapidity worthy of a great, if not a musical, cause. From dawn to dusk, and day by day, did she keep those three keys clicking and clittering, as if her life depended on the result; and so in truth it did, to some extent, for her bread and butter depended on her performances on that very meagre piano.

Although an artless and innocent young girl, fresh from the western shores of Erin, May had a peculiar, and, in one of her age and sex, almost pert way of putting questions, to which she often received quaint and curious replies.

For instance one afternoon she addressed to a learned doctor the following query:—

“Can you send copy last prescription? Lost it. Face red as a carrot. In agonies! What shall I do? Help!”

To which the learned doctor gave the matter-of-fact but inelegant reply:—

“Stick your feet in hot water. Go to bed at once. Prescription sent by post. Take it every hour.”

But May Maylands did not stick her feet in hot water; neither did she go to bed, or take any physic. Indeed there was no occasion to do so, for a clear complexion and pink cheeks told of robust health.

On another occasion she asked an Irish farmer if he could send her twenty casks of finest butter to cost not more than 6 pence per pound.

To which the farmer was rude enough to answer— “Not by no manner of means.”

In short May’s conduct was such that we must hasten to free her from premature condemnation by explaining that she was a female telegraphist in what we may call the literary lungs of London—the General Post-Office at St. Martin’s-le-Grand.

On that chill December afternoon, during a brief lull in her portion of the telegraphic communication of the kingdom, May leaned her little head on her hand, and sent her mind to the little cottage by the sea, already described as lying on the west coast of Ireland, with greater speed than ever she flashed those electric sparks which it was her business to scatter broadcast over the land. The hamlet, near which the cottage stood, nestled under the shelter of a cliff as if in expectation and dread of being riven from its foundations by the howling winds, or whelmed in the surging waves. The cottage itself was on the outskirts of the hamlet, farther to the south. The mind of May entered through its closed door,—for mind, like electricity, laughs at bolts and bars.

There was a buzz of subdued sound from more than twelve hundred telegraphists, male and female, in that mighty telegraph-hall of Saint Martin’s-le-Grand, but May heard it not. Dozens upon dozens of tables, each with its busy occupants—tables to right of her, tables to left of her, tables in rear of her, tables in front of her,—swept away from her in bewildering perspective, but May saw them not. The clicking of six or seven hundred instruments broke upon her ear as they flashed the news of the world over the length and breadth of the land, pulsating joy and sorrow, surprise, fear, hope, despair, and gladness to thousands of anxious hearts, but May regarded it not. She heard only the booming of the great sea, and saw her mother seated by the fire darning socks, with Madge engaged in household work, and Phil tumbling with baby-brother on the floor, making new holes and rents for fresh darns and patches.

Mrs Maylands was a student and lover of the Bible. Her children, though a good deal wilder, were sweet-tempered like herself. It is needless to add that in spite of adverse circumstances they were all moderately happy. The fair telegraphist smiled, almost laughed, as her mind hovered over the home circle.

From the contemplation of this pleasant and romantic picture she was roused by a familiar rustle at her elbow. Recalling her mind from the west of Ireland, she fixed it on a mass of telegrams which had just arrived from various parts of the city.

They had been sucked through several pneumatic tubes—varying from a few yards to two miles in length—had been checked, assorted, registered, and distributed by boys to the various telegraphists to whose lot they fell. May Maylands chanced, by a strange coincidence, to command the instrument in direct connection with Cork. The telegrams just laid beside her were those destined for that city, and the regions to which it was a centre of redistribution. Among others her own village was in connection with it, and many a time had she yearned to touch her keys with a message of love to her mother, but the rules of the office sternly forbade this. The communicative touch which she dispensed so freely to others was forbidden to herself. If she, or any other telegraphist in St. Martin’s-le-Grand, wished to send a private message, it became necessary to step out of the office, go to the appointed place, pay her shilling, and become one of the public for the occasion. Every one can see the necessity for such a rule in the circumstances.

May’s three-keyed machine, by the way, did not actually send forth the electricity. It only punched holes in a long tape of white paper, which holes, according to their relative arrangement, represented the alphabet. Having punched a message by playing on the keys, she transferred her tape to the electric machine at her elbow and passed it through. This transmitting machine was automatic or self acting. It required only to be fed with perforated tapes. In Ireland the receiving-machine presented its messages in the form of dots and dashes, which, according to arrangement, became alphabetic. You don’t understand this, reader, eh? It would be surprising if you did! A treatise on electric telegraphy would be required to make it clear—supposing you to have a mechanical turn of mind. Suffice it to say that the Wheatstone telegraph instrument tapes off its messages at the rate of 100 words a minute.

But to return—

With a sigh May Maylands cast her eyes on the uppermost telegram. It ran thus:—

“Buy the horse at any price. He’s a spanker. Let the pigs go for what they’ll fetch.”

This was enough. Romance, domesticity, and home disappeared, probably with the message along the wire, and the spirit of business descended on the little woman as she applied herself once more to the matter-of-fact manipulation of the keys.

That evening as May left the Post-Office and turned sharply into the dark street she came into collision with a letter-carrier.

“Oh! Miss,” he exclaimed with polite anxiety, “I beg your pardon. The sleet drivin’ in my face prevented my seeing you. You’re not hurt I hope.”

“No, Mr Flint, you haven’t hurt me,” said May, laughing, as she recognised the voice of her own landlord.

“Why, it’s you, Miss May! Now isn’t that good luck, my turnin’ up just in the nick o’ time to see you home? Here, catch hold of my arm. The wind’s fit to tear the lamp-posts up by the roots.”

“But this is not the way home,” objected the girl.

“That’s true, Miss May, it ain’t, but I’m only goin’ round a bit by St. Paul’s Churchyard. There’s a shop there where they sell the sausages my old ’ooman’s so fond of. It don’t add more than a few yards to the road home.”

The old ’ooman to whom Solomon Flint referred was his grandmother. Flint himself had spent the greater part of his life in the service of the Post-Office, and was now a widower, well stricken in years. His grandmother was one of those almost indestructible specimens of humanity who live on until the visage becomes deeply corrugated, contemporaries have become extinct, and age has become a matter of uncertainty. Flint had always been a good grandson, but when his wife died the love he had borne to her seemed to have been transferred with additional vehemence to the “old ’ooman.”

“There’s a present for you, old ’ooman,” said Flint, placing the paper of sausages on the table on entering his humble abode, and proceeding to divest himself of his waterproof cape; “just let me catch hold of a fryin’-pan and I’ll give you to understand what a blow-out means.”

“You’re a good laddie, Sol,” said the old woman, rousing herself and speaking in a voice that sounded as if it had begun its career far back in the previous century.

Mrs Flint was Scotch, and, although she had lived from early womanhood in London, had retained something of the tone and much of the pronunciation of the land o’ cakes.

“Ye’ll be wat, lassie,” she said to May, who was putting off her bonnet and shawl in a corner. “No, Grannie,” returned the girl, using a term which the old woman had begged her to adopt, “I’m not wet, only a little damp.”

“Change your feet, lassie, direc’ly, or you’ll tak’ cauld,” said Mrs Flint in a peremptory tone.

May laughed gently and retired to her private boudoir to change her shoes. The boudoir was not more than eight feet by ten in size, and very poorly furnished, but its neat, methodical arrangements betokened in its owner a refined and orderly mind. There were a few books in a stand on the table, and a flower-pot on the window-sill. Among the pegs and garments on the walls was a square piece of cardboard, on which was emblazoned in scarlet silk, the text, “God is love.” This hung at the foot of the bed, so as to be the first object to greet the girl’s eyes on awaking each morning. Below it hung a row of photographs, embracing the late Reverend James Maylands, his widow, his son Philip, his distant relative Madge, and the baby. These were so arranged as to catch the faint gleam of light that penetrated the window; but as there was a twenty-foot brick wall in front of the window at a distance of two yards, the gleam, even on a summer noon, was not intense. In winter it was barely sufficient to render darkness visible.

Poor May Maylands! It was a tremendous change to her from the free air and green fields of Ireland to a small back street in the heart of London; but necessity had required the change. Her mother’s income could not comfortably support the family. Her own salary, besides supporting herself, was devoted to the enlargement of that income, and as it amounted to only 50 pounds a year, there was not much left to pay for lodgings, etcetera. It is true Miss Lillycrop would have gladly furnished May with board and lodging free, but her house was in the neighbourhood of Pimlico, and May’s duties made it necessary that she should live within a short distance of the General Post-Office. Miss Lillycrop had heard of the Flints as being good-hearted and trusty people, and advised her cousin to board with them, at least until some better arrangement could be made for her. Meanwhile May was to go and spend part of every Sunday with Miss Lillycrop at Number 9 Purr Street.

“Well, Grannie,” said May, returning to the front room, where the sausages were already hissing deliciously, “what news have you for me to-night?”

She sat down beside the old woman, took her hand and spoke in that cheery, cosy, confidential way which renders some women so attractive.

“Deed, May, there’s little but the auld story—Mercies, mornin’, noon, and night. But, oo ay, I was maist forgettin’; Miss Lillycrap was here, an left ye a message o’ some sort.”

“And what was the message, Grannie?”

“She’s gone and forgot it,” said Solomon Flint, putting the sausages on the table, which had already been spread for supper by a stout little girl who was the sole domestic of the house and attendant on Mrs Flint. “You’ve no chance of getting it now, Miss May, for I’ve noticed that when the old ’ooman once forgets a thing it don’t come back to her—except, p’r’aps, a week or two afterwards. Come now, draw in and go to work. But, p’r’aps, Dollops may have heard the message. Hallo! Dollops! come here, and bring the kettle with you.”

Dollops—the little girl above referred to—was particularly small and shy, ineffably stupid, and remarkably fat. It was the last quality which induced Solomon to call her Dollops. Her hair and garments stuck out from her in wild dishevelment, but she was not dirty. Nothing belonging to Mrs Flint was allowed to become dirty.

“Did you see Miss Lillycrop, Dollops?” asked Solomon, as the child emerged from some sort of back kitchen.

“Yes, sir, I did; I saw’d ’er a-goin’ hout.”

“Did you hear her leave a message?”

“Yes, sir, I did. I ’eard ’er say to missis, ‘Be sure that you give May Maylands my love, an tell ’er wotever she do to keep ’er feet dry, an’ don’t forgit the message, an’ say I’m so glad about it, though it’s not much to speak of arter all!’”

“What was she so glad about?” demanded Solomon.

“I dun know, sir. She said no more in my ’earin’ than that. I only comed in w’en she was a-goin’ hout. P’r’aps it was about the findin’ of ’er gloves in ’er pocket w’en she was a talkin’ to missis, which she thought she’d lost, though they wasn’t wuth pickin’ up out of the—”

“Pooh! be off to your pots an’ pans, child,” said Flint, turning to his grandmother, who sat staring at the sausages with a blank expression. “You can’t remember it, I s’pose, eh?”

Mrs Flint shook her head and began to eat.

“That’s right, old ’ooman,” said her grandson, patting her shoulder; “heap up the coals, mayhap it’ll revive the memory.”

But Mrs Flint’s memory was not so easily revived. She became more abstracted than usual in her efforts to recover it. Supper passed and was cleared away. The old woman was placed in her easy chair in front of the fire with the cat—her chief evening amusement—on her knee; the letter-carrier went out for his evening walk; Dollops proceeded miscellaneously to clean up and smash the crockery, and May sat down to indite an epistle to the inmates of Rocky Cottage.

Suddenly Mrs Flint uttered an exclamation.

“May!” she cried, and hit the cat an involuntary slap on the face which sent it with a caterwaul of indignant surprise from her knee, “it wasn’t a message, it was a letter!”

Having thus unburdened her mind the old woman relapsed into the previous century, from which she could not be recalled. May, therefore, made a diligent search for the letter, and found it at last under a cracked teapot on the mantelpiece, where Mrs Flint had told Miss Lillycrop to place it for safety.

It was short but satisfactory, and ran thus:—

“Dearest May,—I’ve been to see my friend ‘in power,’ and he says it’s ‘all right,’ that you’ve only to get your brother over as soon as possible, and he’ll see to getting him a situation. The enclosed paper is for his and your guidance. Excuse haste.—Your affectionate coz, Sarah Lillycrop.”

It need hardly be said that May Maylands finished her letter with increased satisfaction, and posted it that night.

Next morning she wrote out a telegram as follows:— “Let Phil come here at once. The application has been successful. Never mind clothes. Everything arranged. Best love to all.”

The last clause was added in order to get the full value for her money. She naturally underscored the words “at once,” forgetting for the moment that, in telegraphy, a word underlined counts as two words. She was therefore compelled to forego the emphasis.

This message she did not transmit through her own professional instrument, but gave it in at the nearest district office. It was at once shot bodily, with a bundle of other telegrams, through a pneumatic tube, and thus reached St. Martin’s-le-Grand in one minute thirty-five seconds, or about twenty minutes before herself. Chancing to be the uppermost message, it was flashed off without delay, crossed the Irish Channel, and entered the office at Cork in about six minutes. Here there was a short delay of half-an-hour, owing to other telegrams which had prior claim to attention. Then it was flashed to the west coast, which it reached long before the letter posted on the previous night, and not long after May had seated herself at her own three-keyed instrument. But there, telegraphic speed was thwarted by unavoidable circumstances, the post-runner having already started on his morning rounds, and it was afternoon before the telegram was delivered at Rocky Cottage.

This was the telegram which had caused Philip Maylands so much anxiety. He read it at last with great relief, and at the same time with some degree of sadness, when he thought of leaving his mother “unprotected” in her lonely cottage by the sea.

Chapter

3

Brilliant Prospects.

Madge—whose proper name was Marjory Stevens—was absent when May’s letter arrived the following day. On her return to the cottage she was taken into the committee which sat upon the subject of Phil’s appointment.

“It’s not a very grand appointment,” said Mrs Maylands, with a sigh.

“Sure it’s not an appointment at all yet, mother,” returned Phil, who held in his hand the paper of instructions enclosed in May’s letter. “Beggars, you know, mustn’t be choosers; an’ if I’m not a beggar, it’s next thing to it I am. Besides, if the position of a boy-telegraph-messenger isn’t very exalted in itself, it’s the first step to better things. Isn’t the first round of a ladder connected with the top round?”

“That’s true, Phil,” said Madge; “there’s nothing to prevent your becoming Postmaster-General in course of time.”

“Nothing whatever, that I know of,” returned Phil.

“Perhaps somebody else knows of something that may prevent it,” said his mother with an amused smile.

“Perhaps!” exclaimed the boy, with a twinkle in his eye; “don’t talk to me of perhapses, I’m not to be damped by such things. Now, just consider this,” he continued, looking over the paper in his hand, “here we have it all in print. I must apply for the situation in writin’ no less. Well, I can do it in copperplate, if they please. Then my age must be not less than fourteen, and not more than fifteen.”

“That suits to a T,” said Madge.

“Yes; and, but hallo! what have we here?” said Phil, with a look of dismay.

“What is it?” asked his mother and Madge in the same breath, with looks of real anxiety.

“Well, well, it’s too bad,” said Phil slowly, “it says here that I’m to have ‘no claim on the superannuation fund.’ Isn’t that hard?”

A smile from Mrs Maylands, and a laugh from Madge, greeted this. It was also received with an appalling yell from the baby, which caused mother and nurse to leap to the rescue. That sprout of mischief, in the course of an experimental tour of the premises, had climbed upon a side-table, had twisted his right foot into the loop of the window-curtains, had fallen back, and hung, head downwards, howling.

Having been comforted with bread and treacle, and put to bed, the committee meeting was resumed.

“Well, then,” said Phil, consulting his paper again, “I give up the superannuation advantages. Then, as to wages, seven shillings a week, rising to eight shillings after one year’s service. Why, it’s a fortune! Any man at my age can live on sixpence a day easy—that’s three-and-six, leaving three-and-six a week clear for you, mother. Then there’s a uniform; just think o’ that!”

“I wonder what sort of uniform it is,” said Madge.

“A red coat, Madge, and blue trousers with silver lace and a brass helmet, for certain—”

“Don’t talk nonsense, boy,” interrupted Mrs Maylands, “but go on with the paper.”

“Oh! there’s nothing more worth mentioning,” said Phil, folding the paper, “except that boy-messengers, if they behave themselves, have a chance of promotion to boy-sorterships, indoor-telegraph-messengerships, junior sorterships, and letter-carrierships, on their reaching the age of seventeen, and, I suppose, secretaryships, and postmaster-generalships, with a baronetcy, on their attaining the age of Methuselah. It’s the very thing for me, mother, so I’ll be off to-morrow if—”

Phil was cut short by the bursting open of the door and the sudden entrance of his friend George Aspel.

“Come, Phil,” he cried, blazing with excitement, “there’s a wreck in the bay. Quick! there’s no time to lose.”

The boy leaped up at once, and dashed out after his friend.

It was evening. The gale, which had blown for two days was only beginning to abate. Dark clouds were split in the western sky by gleams of fiery light as the sun declined towards its troubled ocean-bed.

Hurrying over the fields, and bending low to the furious blast, Aspel and Philip made their way to the neighbouring cliffs. But before we follow them, reader, to the wave-lashed shore, it is necessary, for the satisfactory elucidation of our tale, that we should go backward a short way in time, and bound forward a long way into space.

Chapter

4

The Royal Mail Steamer.

Out, far out on the mighty sea, a large vessel makes her way gallantly over the billows—homeward bound.

She is a Royal Mail steamer from the southern hemisphere—the Trident—and a right royal vessel she looks with her towering iron hull, and her taper masts, and her two thick funnels, and her trim rigging, and her clean decks—for she has an awning spread over them, to guard from smoke as well as from sun.

There is a large family on board of the Trident, and, like all other large families, its members display marked diversities of character. They also exhibit, like not a few large families, remarkable diversities of temper. Among them there are several human magnets with positive and negative poles, which naturally draw together. There are also human flints and steels which cannot come into contact without striking fire.

When the Trident got up steam, and bade adieu to the Southern Cross, there was no evidence whatever of the varied explosives and combustibles which she carried in her after-cabin. The fifty or sixty passengers who waved kerchiefs, wiped their eyes, and blew their noses, at friends on the receding shore, were unknown to each other; they were intent on their own affairs. When obliged to jostle each other they were all politeness and urbanity.

After the land had sunk on the horizon the intro-circumvolutions of a large family, or rather a little world, began. There was a birth on board, an engagement, ay, and a death; yet neither the interest of the first, nor the romance of the second, nor the solemnity of the last, could check for more than a few hours the steady development of the family characteristics of love, modesty, hate, frivolity, wisdom, and silliness.

A proportion of the passengers were, of course, nobodies, who aspired to nothing greater than to live and let live, and who went on the even tenor of their way, without much change, from first to last. Some of them were somebodies who, after a short time, began to expect the recognition of that fact. There were ambitious bodies who, in some cases, aimed too high, and there were unpretending-bodies who frequently aimed too low. There were also selfish-bodies who, of course, thought only of themselves—with, perhaps, a slight passing reference to those among the after-cabin passengers who could give them pleasure, and there were self-forgetting-bodies who turned their thoughts frequently on the ship, the crew, the sea, the solar system, the Maker of the universe. These also thought of their fellow-passengers in the fore-cabin, who of course had a little family or world of their own, with its similar joys, and sins, and sorrows, before the mast; and there were uproarious-bodies who kept the little world lively—sometimes a little too lively.

As the Royal Mail steamer rushed out to sea and was tossed on the ocean’s breast, these human elements began to mix and effervesce and amalgamate, or fizz, burst, and go off, like squibs and crackers.

There was a Mrs Pods with three little girls, and a Mrs Tods with two little boys, whose first casual glance at each other was transmuted into a glare of undying and unreasoning hate. These ladies were exceptions to the rule of general urbanity before mentioned. Both had fiery faces, and each read the other through and through at a glance. There was a Miss Bluestocking who charmed some people, irritated others, frightened a few, and caused many to sneer. Her chief friend among the males was a young man named Mr Weakeyes, who had a small opinion of himself and a very receptive mind. Miss Troolove, among the ladies, was her chief friend. The strange misnomers which one meets with in society were also found in the little world in that steamer—that Royal Mail steamer we should say—for, while we turn aside for a brief period to condescend upon these particulars, we would not have the reader forget that they have an indirect bearing on the main thread of our tale.

One misnamed lady was a Miss Mist, who, instead of being light, airy, and ethereal, as she ought to have been, weighed at least twelve stone six. But she sang divinely, was a great favourite with the young people on board, and would have been very much missed indeed if she had not been there. There was also a Mr Stout, who was the tallest and thinnest man in the ship.

On the other hand there were some whose names had been obviously the result of a sense of propriety in some one. Among the men who were rabidly set on distinguishing themselves in one way or another was a Major Beak. Now, why was it that this Major’s nose was an aquiline of the most outrageous dimensions? Surely no one would argue that the nose grew to accommodate the name. Is it not more probable—nay, certain—that the name grew to accommodate the nose? Of course when Major Beak was born he was a minor, and his nose must have been no better than a badly-shaped button or piece of putty; but the Major’s father had owned a tremendous aquiline nose, which at birth had also been a button, and so on we can proceed backwards until we drive the Beaks into that remote antiquity where historical fact begins and mythological theory terminates—that period when men were wont, it is supposed, to name each other intelligently with reference to personal characteristic or occupation.