Billy Bunter's Postal Order by Frank Richards.

Published May 1951 by Skilton & Co

Illustrated by R. J. MacDonald.
         

This story contains, perhaps, the most tragic, saddest lines ever to appear in any Bunter story. Bunter has rolled into class, late: Quelch gazes for a moment, at Bunter. Clearly something is wrong. Terribly wrong! …Then he spoke, very mildly.

    “You are late Bunter! But --- you may go to your place.”

    “Yes Sir,” moaned Bunter.

     He hardly cared, at that moment, whether Quelch whopped him or not. He rolled sadly to his place.

     Fellows looked at him on all sides. Something was the matter with Bunter.

     What’s up, old fat man?” whispered Bob Cherry.

    “I’ve lost it!” moaned Bunter

    “Lost what?”

    “My postal order!”

    “Oh!” gasped Bob Cherry.

For nearly fifty years Bunter had dreamed of cashing his postal order at the post office. Now, finally, the moment had arrived, and, disaster had struck!

Detained during break, Bunter is unable to scan the letter rack. Ever hopeful that his celebrated postal order might, finally, have arrived, he asks Cherry to look for him. Cherry agrees to chuck any letter for Bunter in at the form-room window. There is a letter for Bunter, & it is duly chucked. Only to be confiscated by Quelch!

So begins a series of misadventures that see the fat owl suspected of theft. When the letter is belatedly read it is clear that it had not contained a remittance from home. Worse, Quelch has missed a postal order from his study.

Suspected of pilfering, Bunter, not surprisingly to anyone who knows him, goes into hiding. Both the form-room cupboard & the music room become temporary refuges.

In this story we make the re-acquaintance of Mary, the housemaid. It is Mary’s job to clean masters’ studies, here, in the fifties using a “Hoover,” the buzzing of which drives Quelch to distraction.

This thoroughly modern intrusion into the cloistered precincts of Greyfriars has an important role to play.

A superior story in many ways, displaying the very best of the author’s magic touch, Billy Bunter’s Postal Order re-hashes many familiar themes. The central plot, that of Bunter mistaking another postal order for his own is new, but otherwise we are in well-trodden Greyfriars territory.

Quelch & the Greyfriars men all remain true to character, & it is their interactions with each other, which make this a compelling read.