postmark

One of them bore the South Morden postmark. He opened that letter first.

'From India!' said he as he took it up, 'Pondicherry postmark! What can this be?' Opening it hurriedly, out there jumped five little dried orange pips, which pattered down upon his plate.

Why, otherwise, had she looked up so eagerly the moment her daughter mentioned the postmark. Granting the avowed motive for her journey -- did not her manner, on the morning when the letter was opened, and again on the morning of departure, suggest the existence of some other motive which her letter kept concealed?

"Ah, you did not notice the postmark! And yet you affirm so confidently that it came from Styles.

He did not see the Englishman fold up and place in his pocket the accusation written by Danglars under the arbor of La Reserve, and which had the postmark, "Marseilles, 27th Feb., delivery 6 o'clock, P.M." But it must be said that if he had seen it, he attached so little importance to this scrap of paper, and so much importance to his two hundred thousand francs, that he would not have opposed whatever the Englishman might do, however irregular it might be.

There was a letter bearing the Swiss postmark. Simple Cecilia was flattered and delighted by the charming manner in which Francine had written to her.

At last Bob brought her a letter, without a postmark, directed in a hand which she knew familiarly in the letters of her own name,--a hand in which her name had been written long ago, in a pocket Shakespeare which she possessed.

I laid my hand carelessly on the documents, and coldly and slowly glancing at them, I prepared to break the seals; my eye was arrested and my hand too; I saw what excited me, as if I had found a vivid picture where I expected only to discover a blank page: on one cover was an English postmark; on the other, a lady's clear, fine autograph; the last I opened first:--

When I called on Wednesday there was a letter with the West Kensington postmark upon it, and my name scrawled across the envelope in a handwriting which looked like a barbed-wire railing.

He had not thought of looking at the postmark on her letter and did not know how many days it had lain in the rack.

It bore the Kirkandrew postmark, and It was addressed to her in Anne's handwriting.

These were home letters bearing an earlier postmark than that of the former packets, and as Major Dobbin recognized among his the handwriting of his sister, who always crossed and recrossed her letters to her brother--gathered together all the possible bad news which she could collect, abused him and read him lectures with sisterly frankness, and always left him miserable for the day after "dearest William" had achieved the perusal of one of her epistles--the truth must be told that dearest William did not hurry himself to break the seal of Miss Dobbin's letter, but waited for a particularly favourable day and mood for doing so.