Nobody thought, not even John Dolittle himself, when the Swallow Mail was first started, what a tremendous system it would finally grow into and what a lot of happenings and ideas would come about through it.
Of course such an new thing as this required a great deal of learning and working out before it could be made to run . Something new, some fresh problem, cropped up every day. But although the Doctor, at all times a busy man, was worked to death, he found it all so interesting that he didn't mind. But the motherly Dab-Dab was dreadfully worried about him; for indeed at the beginning he seemed never to sleep at all.
Certainly in the whole history of the world there never was another post office like the Doctor's. For one thing, it was a houseboat post office; for another, tea was served to everybody—the clerks and the customers as well—regularly at four o'clock every afternoon, with cucumber sandwiches on Sundays. Paddling over to the Foreign Mails post office for afternoon tea became quite the fashionable thing to do among the more up-to-date Fantippans. A large was put over the back entrance, forming a pleasant sort of with a good view of the ocean and the bay. And if you dropped in for a stamp around four o'clock, as likely as not you would meet the King there, and all the other high notables of Fantippo, tea.
Another thing in which the Doctor's post office was was its pens. Most post offices, the Doctor had found, always had bad pens that spluttered and scratched and wouldn't write. In fact very many post offices even nowadays seem to pride themselves on their bad pens. But the Doctor saw to it that his pens were of the very best quality. Of course, in those times there were no steel pens. Only were used. And John Dolittle got the albatrosses and the seagulls to keep for him their tail feathers which fell out in the moulting season. And of course, with such a lot of quills to choose from, it was easy to have the best pens in the post office.
Still another thing in which the Doctor's post office was different from all others was the gum used on the stamps. The supply of gum which the King had been using for his stamps ran short and the Doctor had to set about discovering and making a new kind. And after a good deal of experiment he invented a gum made of licorice, which dried quickly and worked very well. But, as I have said, the Fantippans were very fond of sweetmeats. And soon after the new gum was put into use the post office was crowded with people buying stamps by the hundred.
At first the Doctor could not understand this sudden new rush of business—which kept Too-Too, the cashier, working every night, adding up the day's takings. The post office safe could hardly hold all the money taken in and the had to be put in a vase on the kitchen mantelpiece.
But presently the Doctor noticed that after they had licked the gum off the stamps, the customers would bring them back and want to exchange them for money again. Now, it is a rule that all post offices have to exchange their own stamps, when asked, for the price paid for them. So long as they are not torn or marked it doesn't matter whether the gum has been licked off or not. So the Doctor saw that he would have to change his kind of gum if he wanted to keep stamps that would stick.
And one day the King's brother came to the post office with a terrible cough and asked him in the same breath (or gasp) to give him five half-penny stamps and a cure for a cough. This gave the Doctor an idea. And the next gum which he invented for his stamps he called whooping-cough gum. He made it out of a special kind of sweet, sticky cough-mixture. He also invented a bronchitis gum, a gum and several others. And whenever there was a disease in the town the Doctor would see that the proper kind of gum to cure it was issued on the stamps. It saved him a lot of trouble, because the people were always bothering him to cure colds and sore throats and things. And he was the first Postmaster General to use this way of getting rid of sickness—by serving round pleasant medicine on the backs of stamps. He called it stamping out an .
One evening at six o'clock Jip shut the doors of the post office as usual, and hung up the sign "Closed" as he always did at that hour. The Doctor heard the bolts being shot and he stopped counting postcards and took out his pipe to have a smoke.
The first hard work of getting the post office in full swing was now over. And that night John Dolittle felt when he heard the doors being shut that at last he could afford to keep more regular hours and not be working all the time. And when Jip came inside the Registered Mail booth he found the Doctor leaning back in a chair with his feet on the desk, gazing around him with great satisfaction.
"Well, Jip," said he with a sigh, "we now have a real working post office."
"Yes," said Jip, putting down his watchman's lantern, "and a good one it is, too. There isn't another like it anywhere."
"You know," said John Dolittle, "although we opened more than a week ago I haven't myself written a single letter yet. Fancy living in a post office for a week and never writing a letter! Look at that drawer there. Ordinarily the sight of so many stamps would make me write dozens of letters. All my life I never had a stamp when I really wanted to write a letter. And—funny thing!—now that I'm living and sleeping in a post office I can't think of a single person to write to."
"It's a shame," said Jip. "And you with such beautiful handwriting too—as well as a drawerful of stamps! Never mind; think of all the animals that are waiting to hear from you."
"Of course, there's Sarah," the Doctor went on at his pipe dreamily. "Poor dear Sarah! I wonder whom she married. But there you are, I haven't her address. So I can't write to Sarah. And I don't suppose any of my old patients would want to hear from me."
"I know!" cried Jip, "write to the Cats'-Meat-Man."
"He can't read," said the Doctor gloomily.
"No, but his wife can," said Jip.
"That's true," murmured the Doctor. "But what shall I write to him about?"
Just at that momen............