The Sunny Side Part 29

_Flipperty--flipperty--flipperty--flipperty--flipperty-- flipperty--flipperty--flipperty--flipperty--flipperty--FLOP._

I listened intently, hoping for more ... but that was all. Deeply disappointed that it was over, but absolutely thrilled with my discovery, I hurried back to Celia.

"Any letters you want posted?" I said in an off-hand way.

"No, thank you," she said.

"Have you written any while we've been here?"

"I don't think I've had anything to write."

"I think," I said reproachfully, "it's quite time you wrote to your--your bank or your mother or somebody."

She looked at me and seemed to be struggling for words.

"I know exactly what you're going to say," I said, "but don't say it; write a little letter instead."

"Well, as a matter of fact I _must_ just write a note to the laundress."

"To the laundress," I said. "Of course, just a note."

When it was written I insisted on her coming with me to post it. With great generosity I allowed her to place it in the slit. A delightful thing happened. It went _Flipperty--flipperty--flipperty flipperty--flipperty--flipperty--flipperty--flipperty flipperty--flipperty--FLOP_.

Right down to the letter-box in the hall. Two flipperties a floor. (A simple calculation shows that we are perched on the fifth floor. I am glad now that we live so high. It must be very dull to be on the fourth floor with only eight flipperties, unbearable to be on the first with only two.)

"_O-oh!_ How _fas_-cinating!" said Celia.

"Now don't you think you ought to write to your mother?"

"Oh, I _must_."

She wrote. We posted it. It went.

_Flipperty--flipperty_--However, you know all about that now.

Since this great discovery of mine, life has been a more pleasurable business. We feel now that there are romantic possibilities about Letters setting forth on their journey from our floor. To start life with so many flipperties might lead to anything.

Each time that we send a letter off we listen in a tremble of excitement for the final FLOP, and when it comes I think we both feel vaguely that we are still waiting for something. We are waiting to hear some magic letter go _flipperty--flipperty--flipperty--flipperty_ ... and behold! there is no FLOP ... and still it goes on--_flipperty--flipperty--flipperty--flipperty_--growing fainter in the distance ... until it arrives at some wonderland of its own. One day it must happen so. For we cannot listen always for that FLOP, and hear it always; nothing in this world is as inevitable as that. One day we shall look at each other with awe in our faces and say, "But it's still flipperting!" and from that time forward the Hill of Campden will be a place holy and enchanted. Perhaps on Midsummer Eve--

At any rate I am sure that it is the only way in which to post a letter to Father Christmas.

Well, what I want to say is this: if I have been a bad correspondent in the past I am a good one now; and Celia, who was always a good one, is a better one. It takes at least ten letters a day to satisfy us, and we prefer to catch ten different posts. With the ten in your hand together there is always a temptation to waste them in one wild rush of flipperties, all catching each other up. It would be a great moment, but I do not think we can afford it yet; we must wait until we get more practised at letter-writing. And even then I am doubtful; for it might be that, lost in the confusion of that one wild rush, the magic letter would start on its way--_flipperty--flipperty_--to the never-land, and we should forever have missed it.

So, friends, acquaintances, yes, and even strangers, I beg you now to give me another chance. I will answer your letters, how gladly. I still think that Napoleon (or Canute or the younger Pliny--one of the pre-Raphaelites) took a perfectly correct view of his correspondence ...

but then _he_ never had a letter-box which went

_Flipperty--flipperty--flipperty--flipperty flipperty--flipperty--flipperty--flipperty--flipperty flipperty--FLOP._

HEAVY WORK

Every now and then doctors slap me about and ask me if I was always as thin as this.

"As thin as what?" I say with as much dignity as is possible to a man who has had his s.h.i.+rt taken away from him.

"As thin as this," says the doctor, hooking his stethoscope on to one of my ribs, and then going round to the other side to see how I am getting on there.

I am slightly better on the other side, but he runs his pencil up and down me and produces that pleasing noise which small boys get by dragging a stick along railings.

I explain that I was always delicately slender, but that latterly my ribs have been overdoing it.

"You must put on more flesh," he says sternly, running his pencil up and down them again. (He must have been a great nuisance as a small boy.)

"I will," I say fervently, "I will."

Satisfied by my promise he gives me back my s.h.i.+rt.

But it is not only the doctor who complains; Celia is even more upset by it. She says tearfully that I remind her of a herring. Unfortunately she does not like herrings. It is my hope some day to remind her of a turbot and make her happy. She, too, has my promise that I will put on flesh.

We had a fortnight's leave a little while ago, which seemed to give me a good opportunity of putting some on. So we retired to a house in the country where there is a weighing-machine in the bathroom. We felt that the mere sight of this weighing-machine twice daily would stimulate the gaps between my ribs. They would realize that they had been brought down there on business.

The first morning I weighed myself just before stepping into the water.

When I got down to breakfast I told Celia the result.

"You _are_ a herring," she said sadly.

"But think what an opportunity it gives me. If I started the right weight, the rest of the fortnight would be practically wasted. By the way, the doctor talks about putting on flesh, but he didn't say how much he wanted. What do you think would be a nice amount?"

"About another stone," said Celia. "You were just a nice size before the War."

"All right. Perhaps I had better tell the weighing-machine. This is a co-operative job; I can't do it all myself."

The next morning I was the same as before, and the next, and the next, and the next.

"Really," said Celia, pathetically, "we might just as well have gone to a house where there wasn't a weighing-machine at all. I don't believe it's trying. Are you sure you stand on it long enough?"

"Long enough for me. It's a bit cold, you know."

"Well, make quite sure to-morrow. I must have you not quite so herringy."

I made quite sure the next morning. I had eight stone and a half on the weight part, and the-little-thing-you-move-up-and-down was on the "4"

notch, and the bar balanced midway between the top and the bottom. To have had a crowd in to see would have been quite unnecessary; the whole machine was shouting eight-stone-eleven as loudly as it could.

"I expect it's got used to you," said Celia when I told her the sad state of affairs. "It likes eight-stone-eleven people."

"We will give it," I said, "one more chance."

Next morning the weights were as I had left them, and I stepped on without much hope, expecting that the bar would come slowly up to its midway position of rest. To my immense delight, however, it never hesitated but went straight up to the top. At last I had put on fles.h.!.+