Plans and Counter Plans.  
One evening Phil sat in the sorting-room of the General Post-Office with his hand to his head—for the eight o’clock mail was starting; his head, eyes, and hands had been unusually active during the past two hours, and when the last bundle of letters dropped from his fingers into the mail-bags, head, eyes, and hands were aching.
 
A row of scarlet vans was standing under a platform, into which mail-bags, apparently innumerable, were being shot. As each of these vans received its quota it rattled off to its particular railway station, at the rate which used, in the olden time, to be deemed the extreme limit of “haste, haste, post haste.” The yard began to empty when eight o’clock struck. A few seconds later the last of the scarlet vans drove off; and about forty tons of letters, etcetera, were flying from the great centre to the circumference of the kingdom.
 
Phil still sat pressing the aching fingers to the aching head and eyes, when he was roused by a touch on the shoulder. It was Peter Pax, who had also, by that time, worked his way upwards in the service.
 
“Tired, Phil?” asked Pax.
 
“A little, but it soon passes off,” said Phil lightly, as he rose. “There’s no breathing-time, you see, towards the close, and it’s the pace that kills in everything.”
 
“Are you going to Pegaway Hall to-night?” asked Pax, “because, if so, I’ll go with you, bein’, so to speak, in a stoodious humour myself.”
 
“No, I’m not going to study to-night,—don’t feel up to it. Besides, I want to visit Mr Blurt. The book he lent me on Astronomy ought to be returned, and I want to borrow another.—Come, you’ll go with me.”
 
After exchanging some books at the library in the basement, which the man in grey had styled a “magnificent institootion,” the two friends left the Post-Office together.
 
“Old Mr Blurt is fond of you, Pax.”
 
“That shows him to be a man of good taste,” said Pax, “and his lending you and me as many books as we want proves him a man of good sense. Do you know, Phil, it has sometimes struck me that, what between our Post-Office library and the liberality of Mr Blurt and a few other friends, you and I are rather lucky dogs in the way of literature.”
 
“We are,” assented Phil.
 
“And ought, somehow, to rise to somethin’, some time or other,” said Pax.
 
“We ought—and will,” replied the other, with a laugh.
 
“But do you know,” continued Pax, with a sigh, “I’ve at last given up all intention of aiming at the Postmaster-Generalship.”
 
“Indeed, Pax!”
 
“Yes. It wouldn’t suit me at all. You see I was born and bred in the country, and can’t stand a city life. No; my soul—small though it be—is too large for London. The metropolis can’t hold me, Phil. If I were condemned to live in London all my life, my spirit would infallibly bu’st its shell an’ blow the bricks and mortar around me to atoms.”
 
“That’s strange now; it seems to me, Pax, that London is country and town in one. Just look at the Parks.”
 
“Pooh! flat as a pancake. No ups and downs, no streams, no thickets, no wild-flowers worth mentioning—nothin’ wild whatever ’cept the child’n,” returned Pax, contemptuously.
 
“But look at the Serpentine, and the Thames, and—”
 
“Bah!” interrupted Pax, “would you compare the Thames with the clear, flowing, limpid—”
 
“Come now, Pax, don’t become poetical, it isn’t your forte; but listen while I talk of matters more important. You’ve sometimes heard me mention my mother, haven’t you?”
 
“I have—with feelings of poetical reverence,” answered Pax.
 
“Well, my mother has been writing of late in rather low spirits about her lonely condition in that wild place on the west coast of Ireland. Now, Mr Blurt has been groaning much lately as to his having no female relative to whom he could trust his brother Fred. You know he is obliged to look after the shop, and to go out a good deal on business, during which times Mr Fred is either left alone, or under the care of Mrs Murridge, who, though faithful, is old and deaf and stupid. Miss Lillycrop would have been available once, but ever since the fire she has been appropriated—along with Tottie Bones—by that female Trojan Miss Stivergill, and dare not hint at leaving her. It’s a good thing for her, no doubt, but it’s unfortunate for Mr Fred. Now, do you see anything in the mists of that statement?”
 
“Ah—yes—just so,” said Pax; “Mr Blurt wants help; mother wants cheerful society. A sick-room ain’t the perfection of gaiety, no doubt, but it’s better than the west coast of Ireland—at least as depicted by you. Yes, somethin’ might come o’ that.”
 
“More may come of it than you think, Pax. You see I want to provide some sort of home for George Aspel to come to when we save him—for we’re sure to save him at last. I feel certain of that,” said Phil, with something in his tone that did not quite correspond to his words—“quite certain of that,” he repeated, “God helping us. I mean to talk it over with May.”
 
They turned, as he spoke, into the passage which led to Mr Flint’s abode.
 
May was at home, and she talked the matter over with Phil in the boudoir with the small window, and the near prospect of brick wall, and the photographs of the Maylands, and the embroidered text that was its occupant’s sheet-anchor.
 
She at once fell in with his idea about getting their mother over to London, but when he mentioned his views about her furnishing a house so as to offer a home to his friend Aspel, she was apparently distressed, and yet seemed unable to explain her meaning, or to state her objections clearly.
 
“Oh! Phil, dear,” she said at last, “don’t plan and arrange too much. Let us try to walk so that we may be led by God, and not run in advance of him.”
 
Phil was perplexed and disappointed, for May not only appeared to throw cold water on his efforts, but seemed unwilling to give her personal aid in the rescue of her old playmate. He was wrong in this. In the circumstances, poor May could not with propriety bring personal influence to bear on Aspel, but she could and did pray for him with all the ardour of a young and believing heart.
 
“It’s a very strange thing,” continued Phil, “that George won’t take assistance from any one. I know that he is in want—that he has not money enough to buy respectable clothes so as to be able to appear among his old friends, yet he will not take a sixpence from me—not even as a loan.”
 
May did not answer. With her face hid in her hands she sat on the edge of her bed, weeping at the thought of her lover’s fallen condition. Poor May! People said that telegraphic work was too hard for her, because her cheeks were losing the fresh bloom that she had brought from the west of Ireland, and the fingers with which she manipulated the keys so deftly were growing very thin. But sorrow had more to do with the change than the telegraph had.
 
“It must be pride,” said her brother.
 
“Oh! Phil,” she said, looking up, “don’t you think that shame has more to do with it than pride?”
 
Phil stooped and kissed her.
 
“Sure it’s that, no doubt, and I’m a beast entirely for suggesting pride.”
 
“Supper! Hallo in there,” shouted Mr Flint, thundering at the door; “don’t keep the old ’ooman waiting!”
 
Phil and May came forth at once, but the former would not remain to supper. He had to visit Mr Blurt, he said, and might perhaps sup with him. Pax would go with him.
 
“Well, my lads, please yourselves,” said Mr Flint,—wheeling the old ............