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Page 55:-
I have ships to load, and pitch and tar to boil, and iron to
hammer, and steam to get up, and smoke to make, and stone to
quarry, and fifty other disagreeable things to do, and I
can't be idle with you.' Then I go into jagged up-hill and
down-hill streets, where I am in the pastry-cook's shop at
one moment, and next moment in savage fastness of moor and
morass, beyond the confines of civilisation, and I say to
those murky and black-dusky streets, 'Will you come
and be idle with me?' To which they reply, 'No, we can't,
indeed, for we haven't the spirits, and we are startled by
the echo of your feet on the sharp pavement, and we have so
many goods in our shop-windows which nobody wants, and we
have so much to do for a limited public which ever comes to
us to be done for, that we are altogether out of sorts and
can't enjoy ourselves with any one.' So I go to the
Post-office, and knock at the shutter, and I say to the
Post-master, 'Will you come and be idle with me?' To
which he rejoins, 'No, I really can't, for I live, as you
may see, in a very little Post-office, and pass my life
behind such a very little shutter, that my hand, when I put
it out, is as the hand of a giant crammed through the window
of a dwarf's house at a fair, and I am a mere Post-office
anchorite in a cell much too small for him, and I can't get
out, and I can't get in, and I have no space to be idle in,
even if I would.' So, the boy," said Mr. Goodchild,
concluding the tale, "comes back with the letters after all,
and lives happily never afterwards."
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