Post Haste | Page 5

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