Wired Love by Ella Cheever Thayer

Author:Ella Cheever Thayer
Language: eng
Format: azw3, epub
Tags: Telegraphers -- Fiction, Love stories
Publisher: Standard Ebooks
Published: 2019-12-11T21:53:39+00:00

X The Broken Circuit Reunited

Mr. Stan­wood sat down at the ta­ble where Nat­tie was look­ing over Cyn’s al­bum, and seemed to have be­come very thought­ful; Cyn mean­while bus­ied her­self in dress­ing an ugly gash the ever-un­for­tu­nate Quimby had man­aged to in­flict on his hand.

Sud­denly Nat­tie was dis­turbed by Mr. Stan­wood drum­ming with a pen­cil on the mar­ble top of the ta­ble, and glanc­ing up ca­su­ally, ob­served his eyes fixed upon her with a pe­cu­liar ex­pres­sion, and at the same mo­ment her ear seemed to catch a fa­mil­iar sound. With a slight start she lis­tened more at­ten­tively to his seem­ingly idle drum­ming. Yes—whether know­ingly, or by ac­ci­dent, he cer­tainly was mak­ing dots and dashes, and what is more, was mak­ing N’s!

“I will soon as­cer­tain if he means it or not!” thought Nat­tie, and seiz­ing a pair of scis­sors, the only adapt­able in­stru­ment handy, she drummed out, slowly, on ac­count of the im­per­fect­ness of her im­promptu key—pre­tend­ing all the while to be en­tirely ab­sorbed in the al­bum,

“Are you an op­er­a­tor?”

Mr. Stan­wood, in his turn, seem­ingly deeply en­gaged in the con­tents of a book, im­me­di­ately drummed in re­sponse,

“Yes.”

Nat­tie felt the color come into her face.

“Oh, dear!” she thought, “and Cyn told him that ridicu­lous story! Every op­er­a­tor in town will know it now.” Then with the scis­sors she asked,

“Why didn’t you say so? Where is your of­fice?”

“I have none now,” the pen­cil an­swered, while Cyn, glanc­ing across the room, won­dered to see the two so stu­dious, and un­sus­pi­ciously asked Quimby if he sup­posed they were prac­tic­ing for a drum corps? After a few mean­ing­less dots, the pen­cil went on,

“A lit­tle girl at B m was dread­fully sold one day!”

The al­bum Nat­tie held fell from her hands as she stared pet­ri­fied at her vis-à-vis, who kept his eyes on his book with the most in­no­cent ex­pres­sion imag­in­able, one that even a Chi­na­man could not have equaled. Where could he have heard those words, once so fa­mil­iar? A mo­ment’s thought gave her the most prob­a­ble key.

“You are in the main of­fice of this city, and have heard me talk­ing with C!” she wrote, as fast as the scis­sors would let her.

“No, to the first of your sur­mise,” came from the pen­cil, “and yes to the last.”

“What of­fice were you in?” the scis­sors asked.

“X n,” re­sponded the pen­cil.

“What! with C?” asked the scis­sors, and if ever there was a pair of ex­cited scis­sors, these were the ones.

“Well—yes,” replied the pen­cil with pro­vok­ing slow­ness. “Don’t you ‘C’ the point? Can’t you ‘C’ that you did not ‘C’ the ‘C’ you thought you did ‘C’ that day?”

Nat­tie’s breath came fast, and her hand trem­bled so she could not hold the scis­sors. With a crash they dropped on the ta­ble, mak­ing one loud, long dash. But the im­per­turbable pen­cil went on calmly,

“It was all a mis­take. I am—C!”

Dis­dain­ing scis­sors and pen­cil, Nat­tie started up, ex­claim­ing ve­he­mently,

“What do you mean? it can’t be pos­si­ble!”

The con­ster­na­tion of Cyn, who was just in­form­ing Quimby that his wound would do very well now,

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