Read Ebook: The Story of a Doctor's Telephone—Told by His Wife by Firebaugh Ellen M

Font size: 10 px 15 px 20 px 25 px 30 px 35 px

Background color: BlackWhiteGrayLight GrayDark GrayDim Gray

Text color: BlackWhiteGrayLight GrayDark GrayDim Gray

Apply/Save settings

Ebook has 2081 lines and 53647 words, and 42 pages

DAUGHTERS OF LITTLE GREY HOUSE

ITS INMATES

"How do you know when you're a young lady?" asked Roberta Grey.

She was sitting before the ancient mahogany dressing-table in her--and Wythie's--room, unblushingly regarding herself in the mirror, while the fingers of both hands, supporting her brilliant face, experimented with changes in it by pushing up the delicate eyebrows into quite a celestial angle.

Frances Silsby, from the rocking-chair by the window, and Wythie on the foot of the bed, laughed.

"I know I'm young by the record in the Bible--and by the way I feel," said Frances. "And I know I'm a lady by the company I keep, since 'birds of a feather,' and so forth." Frances made a deep salaam almost to the floor, taking advantage of the forward tilt of the rocking-chair to deepen it.

"That's the retort courteous, Francie. You will be an ornament to the diplomatic circle when you are Lady Ambassadress to the court of St. James'. But I should like to know how to be sure one's reluctant feet have crossed the meeting point of the brook and the river," insisted Rob.

"If one had to put on shoes and stockings, for instance, after she ceased to stand where the brook and river meet, she would know that she had waded in and had come out on the other side, a young lady," Rob went on with slightly heightened colour, ignoring her sister. "That's it; I have it!" she cried, wheeling around to look at her audience outside the glass. "It is something of the sort--it's the hair! I am just eighteen, but I wear my hair in a braid, with a big bow where it is turned up on the top of my head. If I discarded that bow, and made a great soft knot of hair 'on the top of my head, in the place where the wool ought to grow'"--Rob chanted this direct quotation--"I should be a young lady! I think I'll do it!"

She jumped up, snatched a kimono from a hook in the closet, threw it over her shoulders, dropped back into her chair before the dressing-table and in a twinkling had the pins out of her braid; the bow, badge of young girlhood, thrown on the table, and her rebellious, red-brown hair tumbling about her slender shoulders in a mass of beautiful colour.

Rob arose as she spoke and faced her sister and her friend. She was tall, slender, radiant with nervous energy and quick wit; pretty, yet charming more than pretty. The sort of girl that she had promised to be; one who would carry everything before her with her high courage, high standards, and her flashing charm of variety in colouring and expression. Wythie was the same Wythie that she had been always; pretty, womanly, gentle, sweet, with goodness, pure, simple, unadulterated goodness, shining from her steady eyes and smiling lips. Frances Silsby had not changed much. She, too, was pretty in an unobtrusive way, and had grown more so in growing older. "She was a girl," Bruce Rutherford said, "whom one would endorse or cash at sight," and she deserved the trust that she inspired. But Rob swept everything before her; no one ever stopped to criticise nor analyse Rob. She flashed on the scene, and instantly every eye was filled with the variable charm of her face, which defied regular laws of beauty. Every heart went out to the warmth of her magnetic presence and kindliness of nature; while no one could be sceptic enough to doubt her crystal purity of purpose and truth.

Oswyth loved her with adoring love, and Frances regarded her as the embodiment of all her ideals, just as she had regarded her from her first meeting with Rob at the great age of three.

In the fifteen months that had passed since Rob's resolution had prevented the sacrifice of her beloved "Patergrey's" legacy to his family, and had secured for the Greys the full value of the patent into which he had poured the best effort of years of his pathetic life, both Oswyth and Rob had blossomed into girls of nineteen, and eighteen respectively, and into a fulness of life and happiness such as they could never have attained but that the stress and strain of anxiety and even want, had thus been removed. They were not wealthy people, by any means, these blithe and busy Greys, but they possessed, now, what seemed contrastingly like wealth to them, and which was quite enough to satisfy the true standards and tastes which their noble mother had given them. And the little grey house, which had always seemed rather like one of themselves than a mere house, had blossomed with its daughters into fuller adornment and cheerfulness during this year and a quarter. Many pretty modern things had crept in to take their places among the riches of inherited mahogany, pewter and china which were the little grey house's glory and pride.

"Well, you don't say anything! Don't you like me in my new r?le of full blown young lady, sans braid, sans bow, sans everything that fettered me in the bud?" demanded Rob, as Frances and Wythie gazed at her without speaking.

"You have preceded me a-down the knotty way, Wythie," said Rob. "See what dreadful puns you force me to in order to cheer you when you become pensive! Your hair has been knotted and twisted up for a year. You preceded me into the world by a twelvemonth, and dutifully I follow you, one year in retard, in the matter of full-grown hair-dressing. Isn't it all right, Francie?"

"The rightest kind of right, Rob," said Frances emphatically. "You are eighteen, and it is time you came into your kingdom--besides, it is most becoming! I only wish I could make my hair puff and lie up loose like that."

For Frances' hair was of that fine, yet determined kind which is no more capable of trifling with life than were the Puritan ancestors from whom it was derived.

"There is no power on earth could make mine lie down smooth and decorous like yours," retorted Rob, surveying with half approval, half disfavour her hair which, like her face, was as full of ripples and curves as ever. "Then, on the whole, the sentiment of the meeting is in favour of the new departure. Girls, you have been singularly fortunate! You have seen the larva turn into the butterfly--and you didn't have to stand a glass over me either! I am now, Roberta Grey, spinster, and I will fold up my hair-bow and present it to Prudence to have and to hold, and to use until her hour of eighteen sounds."

"Here she comes now, with your mother," announced Frances from her seat by the window.

"They went up to Aunt Azraella's, and then Mardy was going to Cousin Charlotte's, while Prue went to the post-office. They were to meet at Cousin Charlotte's, and come home together. I hope Mardy isn't tired," said Wythie, untwining herself from her Turkish position on the foot of the bed, and running to look over Frances' shoulder and to wave her hand at the beloved mother and Prudence.

Prue ran up-stairs; the girls heard Mrs. Grey going through the house to find Lydia in the kitchen. Accustomed as she was to seeing Prue, Frances felt anew, as she always did each time that she saw her, the startling quality of the youngest Grey girl's great beauty. During the past year Prue had grown amazingly, and had shot up into a slender creature that topped by nearly a head Rob, who had seemed fairly tall until Prue accomplished this feat. Her complexion was white with not a hint of colour, unless it was brought there by her emotions, or whipped into her cheeks by the breeze. Her features were faultlessly regular; her hair bright gold, silky and abundant, flying like floss around her low white brow. Her lips relieved the pallor of her face by their warm crimson, and from under the golden crown of hair, which the tall young creature wore proudly, there looked out a pair of large dark brown eyes that startled one by their contrast with their surroundings. There was no question that Prue was not only the beauty of the family, but that she had grown into a beauty of a rare type and of a very high rank. Unfortunately, she was conscious of her effect, although she was hardly to blame for this, since every one, except her wise mother and sisters, flattered her. It was a lucky thing for Prue that Wythie's sweetness and Rob's charm surpassed in the long run the attraction of Prue's dazzling beauty; for, otherwise, she might have forgotten altogether that beauty is by no means the only gift that the good fairies can bestow at a christening.

"I thought I should find you here, Frances. Here is a letter for you, Rob, but there was no other. I saw Battalion B down by the post-office; I thought they went back this morning," said Prue, dropping a letter in Rob's lap, and laying her hat on her knee as she seated herself beside Wythie and picked out the edges of its bows.

"No; Basil said he had to meet Mr. Dinsmore--they are having some trouble with their landlord, and Basil said if they couldn't get it straightened up they would buy the Caldwell place. It isn't really their landlord, but his agent that bothers them," said Wythie, trying to mention Basil Rutherford's name in the same old, easy, unconscious way she had used it when Battalion B and the Grey girls had first become friends. "And Bruce wanted to see Dr. Fairbairn, so they all waited to go back to New Haven this afternoon--of course Bartlemy waited to go with Basil and Bruce."

"Basil and Bruce both said that they would buy the Caldwell place rather than leave Fayre," smiled Frances, and Wythie blushed; but Rob was deep in her letter and did not heed. "Do you know, Wythie, I don't believe we realize what a lot of money those boys must have?" Frances continued. "You know they nevan that the other should be again troubled by it. No use to let her gently understand that she doesn't care for any confidences which belong only to her husband, but Fate has placed her in a position where she has oftentimes to seem unduly interested. That these messages which are only occasional with the one calling are constant with her and that she is only mindful of them when she must be.

"Watch the 'phone." How thoroughly instilled into Mary's consciousness that admonition was! She did not heed the office ring when it came, but if it came a second time she always went to explain that the doctor had just stepped over to the drug store probably and would be back in a very few minutes. Often, as she stood explaining, the doctor himself would break into the conversation, having been in another room when the first call came, and getting there a little tardily for the second. But occasions sometimes arose which made Mary feel very thankful that she had been at the 'phone. One winter morning as she stood explaining to some woman that the doctor would be in in a few minutes, her husband's "Hello" was heard.

"There he is now," she said. Usually after this announcement she would hang up the receiver and go about her work. Today a friendly interest in this pleasant voice kept it in her hand a moment. Mary would not have admitted idle curiosity, and perhaps she had as little of it as falls to the lot of women, but sometimes she lingered a moment for the message, to know if the doctor was to be called away, so that she might make her plans for dinner accordingly. The pleasant voice spoke again, "This is Dr. Blank, is it?"

"Yes."

"We want you to come out to Henry Ogden's."

"That's about five miles out, isn't it. Who's sick out there?"

"Mrs. Ogden."

"What's the matter?"

No reply.

"How long has she been sick?"

"She began complaining last night."

"All right--I'll be out some time today."

"Come right away, please, if you can."

"Hello."

"Well, I'm going after a little."

"Well,--maybe I had better go right out."

"I wish you would. I know they'll be looking for you every minute."

A few minutes later Mary saw him drive past and was glad. Half an hour later the office ring sounded. She did not wait for the second peal. True, John had not said, "Watch the 'phone," today, but that was understood. Occasionally he got an old man who lived next door to the office to come in and stay during his absence. Possibly he might have done so today. But even if he were there the telephone and its ways were a dark mystery to him and besides, his deafness made him of little use in that direction.

Mary knew from her inflection that she had asked something before and was not satisfied with the reply.

"The doctor," said the old man meditatively, as if wondering that anybody should be calling for him--"the doctor--you mean Dr. Blank, I reckon?"

"I certainly do."

"Why, he's out."

"He went to the country."

Mary shut her lips tight.

"He 'lowed he'd be back in about an hour or so."

Mary longed to speak. Why hadn't she done so at first. If she thrust herself in now it would make her out an eavesdropper. But this was unbearable. She opened her mouth to speak when the old man answered.

"He's been gone over an hour now, I reckon."

"Then he'll soon be back. Will you be there when he comes?"

"Yes ma'am."

Share on: WhatsApp @Hash Facebook Tweet