In imagination I could see the telephone against the wall
in the old hallway at Sabine Farm. I could see the soiled patch of
plaster where Andrew rests his elbow when he talks into the 'phone,
and the place where he jots numbers down in pencil and I rub
them off with bread crumbs. I could see Andrew coming out of
the sitting-room to answer the bell. And then the operator said
carelessly, "Doesn't answer." My forehead was wet as I came out
of the booth.
I hope I may never have to re-live the horrors of the next hour.
In spite of my bluff and hearty ways, in times of trouble I am as
reticent as a clam. I was determined to hide my agony and anxiety
from the well-meaning people of the Moose Hotel. I hurried to the
railway station to send a telegram to the Professor's address in
Brooklyn, but found the place closed. A boy told me it would not be
open until the afternoon. From a drugstore I called "information" in
Willdon, and finally got connected with some undertaker to whom the
Willdon operator referred me. A horrible, condoling voice (have you
ever talked to an undertaker over the telephone?) answered me that
no one by the name of Mifflin had been among the dead, but admitted
that there was one body still unidentified.
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