"But we never thought where the dogs might be getting all these things they brought us. The truth is,东方👎 we didn't bother very much,古剑奇🚐 I'm afraid. Anyway at the end of our first week of brisk trade we noticed a great many people going through the streets as though they were looking for something. And presently these people,东方📦 seeing our shop in the empty lot,东方☁ gathered around us,古剑奇📛 talking to one another. And while they were talking a retriever came up to me with a gold watch and chain in his mouth,东方✒ which he wanted to exchange for a ham bone.
One evening at six o'clock Jip shut the doors of the post office as usual,古剑奇💵 and hung up the sign "Closed" as he always did at that hour. The Doctor heard the bolts being shot and he stopped counting postcards and took out his pipe to have a smoke.
The educational side of the Doctor's post office was a very important one and it grew all the time. As he had said to the Skimmer at the beginning,东方💿 as soon as the birds and animals realized the helpfulness of having a post office of their own they used it more and more.At last poor Dab-Dab,东方🙇 fully awakened,东方✳ understood what was the matter. And in a moment she was up and doing.
"Doctor,古剑奇🍬" said she,古剑奇🌱 "if the lighthouse keeper is in there at all he must be sick,东方🌕 or something. I hammered on the windows,东方📬 but nobody answered."
"Indeed?" said the Doctor. "I would like very much to meet him."
Then the Emir flew into a terrible passion."'Willie,东方📨 we're lost! Whatever shall we do? Night is coming on and I'm so afraid of the dark.'
Overhead the thick jungle arched and hung like a tunnel of green. This was a good thing by day-time,东方🐑 as it kept the sun off better than a parasol. And in the dry stretches of river bed,古剑奇⚽ where the Doctor had to carry or drag the canoe on home-made runners,东方👏 the work was hard and shade something to be grateful for.
The snake,东方🎣 hearing Cheapside's chatter,东方💻 thought something must be wrong. He turned his head-end around and came back to see what the matter was. Then a short halt was made in the journey while the Doctor and Jip cleaned themselves up,古剑奇🐟 and the precious notebooks,东方👉 which had also been jerked out into the mud,东方⚽ were rescued and stowed in a safe place.
The Doctor did not expect an answer to it right away because the Cats'-Meat-Man's wife was a very slow reader and a still slower writer. And anyhow,东方💺 Cheapside could not be expected to visit Puddleby for another week yet. He always stayed in London until after the Easter Bank Holiday. His wife refused to let him leave for the country till the spring family had been taught by their father how to find the houses where people threw out crumbs; how to pick up oats from under the cab horses' nose bags without being stamped on by the horses' hoofs; how to get about in the trafficky streets of London and a whole lot of other things that young city birds have to know.
Some weeks later the Doctor received this letter from a farmer in Lincolnshire:
"Feel in the man's pockets,古剑奇🔺" called John Dolittle. "Hurry!"
"I know!" cried Jip. "It's the dragon! This is King Kakaboochi's mother-in-law we're sitting on!"
One day Gub-Gub came to the Doctor and said:
"Do no people at all live in these parts?" the Doctor asked the snake."A Quiffeno-what-us?" asked Jip.
"It looks to me,东方🍨" she said,东方🚔 "like the Harmattan Rocks."
"'Fine,古剑奇✝' says he. 'Try that and see what happens!'
"That was a queer-looking customer,东方📳 wasn't he?" he said to Dab-Dab.So the Skimmer sped off into the darkness toward the tiny light far out to sea,古剑奇🏀 while the Doctor fell to wondering how his own ship was getting on which he had left at anchor some miles down the coast to the southward.
And soon the No-Man's-Land Weather Bureau began to get known abroad. The farmers in England,东方💮 who had received such good weather reports by letter from the Doctor,东方🌊 went up to London and told the government that their own reports were no good,古剑奇♉ that a certain John Dolittle,东方💮 M.D.,古剑奇🌂 was writing them much better reports from some place in Africa.