Post Haste | Page 5

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