Johnny Swanson - Eleanor Updale [18]
‘I quite understand,’ said the lady, lifting her glasses to peer down at Johnny. ‘A woman can’t be too careful these days. But a box is sixpence a week.’
‘But I’ve only got one and six,’ said Johnny, putting his coins on the counter. ‘And I have to get the advert in. She told me to run here. I don’t know what to do.’ He could feel his eyes starting to sting.
For once, being small and pale worked wonders for Johnny. The woman smiled sympathetically, put her glasses back on and examined the advert again.
‘Well, you could have twelve words in one newspaper for a shilling,’ she said. ‘Let’s see if we can cut this down.’
She showed Johnny how ‘stamped addressed envelope’ could be abbreviated to ‘SAE’. ‘One shilling postal order’ could be written as ‘1/– PO’. She assured him that everyone would know what that meant. Like the box number, and ‘SAE’, it would count as just one word.
They ended up with: Stop Your Baby Wetting the Bed. Send 1/– PO & SAE to Box 5.
‘I shouldn’t really be showing you that,’ said the lady, who was getting ever more friendly. ‘Strictly speaking, I ought to encourage you to write more, so that we can charge extra. The other week someone came in with a little advert like this, and I persuaded him to spell out everything in full and put in the whole address of the paper. It pumped the price right up. I think I even got him to pay for a border round it. But he wasn’t a nice man. He was really rude. I don’t see why I should have to put up with discourtesy.’
Johnny thought back to the Instant Height advert. He hoped the lady was talking about the person who had tricked him into parting with money for that. ‘Well, my auntie will certainly be very grateful that you have been so helpful to me,’ he said in his best voice. ‘Now I really mustn’t hold you up any longer. Goodbye, madam.’
‘Goodbye,’ said the lady, smiling at his politeness. ‘Tell your aunt she can collect the replies on any weekday during office hours.’
‘She’ll probably send me,’ said Johnny.
He was on his way through the door and the lady was putting on her coat when she added, ‘Oh, how silly of me. I forgot to take your aunt’s name and address.’
Johnny hoped his panic didn’t show as he made up a fictitious address on the spot. Auntie Ada was becoming ever more real. And she had a surname now. It seemed to come to him from nowhere, but afterwards he thought it fitted her rather well. From now on she was Mrs Ada Fortune. She’d have to be married. ‘Miss Fortune’ just didn’t sound right.
Chapter 10
IN BUSINESS
After a week, Johnny returned to the newspaper office. He was late again. There was no way he could deliver all the papers and get there much before five o’clock. As before, the lady was in a hurry to leave.
‘I have quite a journey,’ she said. ‘I live in Mardly. The bus goes at twenty past.’
‘I’m sorry,’ said Johnny, concealing his delight that she was not a Stambleton resident. He’d been worrying for days that she would realize he’d given a false address. He turned on the charm again. ‘Do forgive me for coming at this hour. My aunt has sent me to collect the replies to her advertisement. It’s Box Five.’
The woman turned to a rack of pigeonholes and took out a large envelope. She peeped inside, then sealed the flap. ‘Take care of it,’ she said. ‘There are a few letters in there. They might have money in them. Mind how you go.’
Johnny couldn’t wait to get away and open the package. ‘I won’t hold you up any longer, madam,’ he said, nodding politely on his way out. He dashed down to the edge of the canal and hid there until the woman had locked the door and set off for her bus stop. Then he tore open the big envelope. There were four smaller packets inside. Each of them contained a postal order for one shilling and a stamped addressed envelope for Johnny’s reply. Johnny remembered how he had felt, assembling his letter to the people offering the Secret of Instant Height. For a moment he pictured the senders of these letters, desperately hoping for the solution to their babies’ bedwetting, not suspecting that they were