Friarswood Post-Office

A village post office kept by a widow, an errand boy dying of consumption, and a gentleman's son who has stolen and cannot say so — three lives held together by letters passing through one small window. Yonge wrote it in 1860 for parish reading, and the theology is unembarrassed. The illness is described with the accuracy of someone who had sat by such beds, and the boy's death is neither hurried nor prettified. Thirty-nine plates of village and household painting by Wilkie, Constable and others give the post-office window its world of errands, doorways and quiet rooms.