She had the post office, not so much on account of her competence, as because hers was, at the time the postal authorities had decided to open a branch at Crumach, the one and only shop there. Later, when a polite gentleman from Pettalva, rendered desperate by complaints from the English people who came up for the shooting, suggested politely to Luckie Jean the advisability of putting the charge into the hands of a younger woman, he thought himself fortunate to escape with his eyes still intact in his head. Luckie Jean, half blind and wholly ignorant as to all but local names and places, kept the post office; and English visitors went on adding to the national revenue by writing unavailing letters of bitter complaint. It was this redoubtable old woman who looked up fiercely over her horn-rimmed spectacles as the young Grahams trooped in a body into the odd-and-end shop. She was bending over the post-bag as it lay on the counter, sorting the letters and papers into little heaps, and keeping up a vigorous undercurrent of grumbling all the time. "Na! na! You can't come worrying for sweeties now. Be off, there's douce bairnies. I'm busy." "No hurry," said Gavin politely. "We'll wait." And he began to wander round the shop, hands in pockets, attended by his constant adorers, Kirsty and Bingo. Joey stood staring at the post-bag and the piles of letters, and Ronnie stood near her, breathing hard. It was no use to interrupt Luckie Jean when she was busy with the post-bag; it would probably mean ignominious expulsion with boxed ears, for Luckie Jean in a temper was no respecter of persons. "Hillo! The 'Englishy' cake full of currants is gone from the window. You've had it there these three months--'member how I brushed the dead flies off last time we came, and cleaned it up?" Gavin remarked with interest. Luckie Jean happened to have just come to the end of a pile, so did not fall upon him for interrupting. "Ou ay. I selled yon to the Englishy gentleman, with the niminy-piminy voice on him, that's at the Widow Macintyre's up the street for the painting," she answered, with a chuckle. "Fine she'll recognise it, will the widow; she having tried to pit me off with ane of the bonnets she wore afore the deleterious trembles took her man, for payment when yon cake was fair new. But her lodger he paid a good Englishy price for it, and I don't take nowt back." "He'll have to be hungry before he gets through it," Gavin opined; but Luckie Jean had gone back to her letters and took no notice. "Evelyn Bonham, _Esquire_," she grumbled; "what for should it be the Englishy way for to gi' a manfolk the name of a wumman? And staying at 'The Neste' near Crumach. I've heard tel of Nests. Yon must wait till I've cried on the tinker-body, as should be round in the tail of the week; that body kens a'body's business." "I think 'The Neste' is that jolly little new house under the hill; we could leave it as we go back, Luckie, if you liked," ventured Joey.