Page:Carroll - Sylvie and Bruno Concluded.djvu/205

XI] we don't pay them! I've often got as much as five shillings for sending a parcel."

"But doesn't your Government object?"

"Well, they do object, a little. They say it comes so expensive, in the long run. But the thing's as clear as daylight, by their own rules. If I send a parcel, that weighs a pound more than nothing, I pay three-pence: so, of course, if it weighs a pound less than nothing, I ought to receive three-pence."

"It is indeed a useful article!" I said.

"Yet even 'Imponderal' has its disadvantages," he resumed. "I bought some, a few days ago, and put it into my hat, to carry it home, and the hat simply floated away!"

"Had oo some of that funny stuff in oor hat today?" Bruno enquired. "Sylvie and me saw oo in the road, and oor hat were ever so high up! Weren't it, Sylvie?"

"No, that was quite another thing," said Mein Herr. "There was a drop or two of rain falling: so I put my hat on the top of my stick as an umbrella, you know. As I came along the road," he continued, turning to me, "I was overtaken by"