Wired Love.

by Ella Cheever Thayer.

CHAPTER I.

SOUNDS FROM A DISTANT "C."

Just a noise, that is all.

But a very significant noise to Miss Nathalie Rogers, or Nattie, as she was usually abbreviated; a noise that caused her to lay aside her book, and jump up hastily, exclaiming, with a gesture of impatience:--

"Somebody always 'calls' me in the middle of every entertaining chapter!"

For that noise, that little clatter, like, and yet too irregular to be the ticking of a clock, expressed to Nattie these four mystic letters:--

"B m--X n;"

which same four mystic letters, interpreted, meant that the name, or, to use the technical word, "call," of the telegraph office over which she was present sole presiding genius, was "B m," and that "B m" was wanted by another office on the wire, designated as "X n."

A little, out-of-the-way, country office, some fifty miles down the line, was "X n," and, as Nattie signaled in reply to the "call" her readiness to receive any communications therefrom, she was conscious of holding in some slight contempt the possible abilities of the human portion of its machinery.

For who but an operator very green in the profession would stay _there_?

Consequently, she was quite unprepared for the velocity with which the telegraph alphabet of sounds in dots and dashes rattled over the instrument, appropriately termed a "sounder," upon which messages are received, and found herself wholly unable to write down the words as fast as they came.

"Dear me!" she thought, rather nervously, "the country is certainly ahead of the city this time! I wonder if this smart operator is a lady or gentleman!"

And, notwithstanding all her efforts, she was compelled to "break"--that is, open her "key," thereby breaking the circuit, and interrupting "X n"

with the request,

"Please repeat."

"X n" took the interruption very good-naturedly--it was after dinner--and obeyed without expressing any impatience.

But, alas! Nattie was even now unable to keep up with this too expert individual of uncertain s.e.x, and was obliged again to "break," with the humiliating pet.i.tion,

"Please send slower!"

"Oh!" responded "X n."

For a small one, "Oh!" is a very expressive word. But whether this particular one signified impatience, or, as Nattie sensitively feared, contempt for her abilities, she could not tell. But certain it was that "X n" sent along the letters now, in such a slow, funereal procession that she was driven half frantic with nervousness in the attempt to piece them together into words. They had not proceeded far, however, before a small, thin voice fell upon the ears of the agitated Nattie.

"Are you taking a message now?" it asked.

Nattie glanced over her shoulder, and saw a sharp, inquisitive nose, a green veil, a pair of eye-gla.s.ses, and a strained smile, sticking through her little window.

Nodding a hasty answer to the question, she wrote down another word of the message, that she had been able to catch, notwithstanding the interruption. As she did so the voice again queried,

"Do you take them entirely by sound?"

With a determined endeavor not to "break," Nattie replied only with a frown. But fate was evidently against her establishing a reputation for being a good operator with "X n."

"Here, please attend to this quick!" exclaimed a new voice, and a tall gentleman pounded impatiently on the shelf outside the little window with one hand, and with the other held forth a message.

With despair in her heart, once more Nattie interrupted "X n," took the impatient gentleman's message, studied out its illegible characters, and changed a bill, the owner of the nose looking on attentively meanwhile; this done, she bade the really much-abused "X n" to proceed, or in telegraphic terms, to

"G. A.--the."

"G. A." being the telegraphic abbreviation for "go ahead," and "the" the last word she had received of the message.

And this time not even the fact of its being after dinner restrained "X n's" feelings, and "X n" made the sarcastic inquiry,

"Had you not better go home and send down some one who is capable of receiving this message?"

Now it would seem as if two persons sixty or seventy miles apart might severally fly into a rage and nurse their wrath comfortably without particularly annoying each other at the moment. But riot under present conditions; and Nattie turned red and bit her nails excitedly under the displeasure of the distant person of unknown s.e.x, at "X n." But no instrument had yet been invented by which she could see the expression on the face of this operator at "X n," as she retorted, and her fingers formed the letters very sharply;

"Do you think it will help the matter at all for you to make a display of your charming disposition? G. A.--the--."

"I am happy to be able to return the compliment implied!" was "X n's"

preface to the continuation of the message.

And now indeed Nattie might have recovered some of her fallen glories, being angry enough to be fiercely determined, had not the owner of the nose again made her presence manifest by the sudden question:

"Do you have a different sound for every word, or syllable, or what?"

And, turning quickly around to scowl this persevering questioner into silence, Nattie's elbow hit and knocked over the inkstand, its contents pouring over her hands, dress, the desk and floor, and proving beyond a doubt, as it descended, the truth of its label--

"Superior Black Ink!"

And then, save for the clatter of the "sounder," there was silence.

For a moment Nattie gazed blankly at her besmeared hands and ruined dress, at the "sounder," and at the owner of the nose, who returned her look with that expression of serene amus.e.m.e.nt often noticeable in those who contemplate from afar the mishaps of their fellow beings; then with the courage of despair, she for the fourth time "broke" "X n," saying, with inky impression on the instrument,

"Excuse me, but you will have to wait! I am all ink, and I am being cross-examined!"

Having thus delivered herself, she turned a deliberately deaf ear to "X n's" response, which, judging from the way the movable portion of the "sounder" danced, was emphatic.

"A little new milk will take that out!" complacently said the owner of the nose, watching Nattie's efforts to remove the ink from her dress with blotting-paper.

"Unfortunately I do not keep a cow here!" Nattie replied, tartly.

Not quite polite in Nattie, this. But do not the circ.u.mstances plead strongly in her excuse? For, remember, she was not one of those impossible, angelic young ladies of whom we read, but one of the ordinary human beings we meet every day.

The owner of the nose, however, was not charitable, and drew herself up loftily, as she said in imperative accents,