[Illustration: THE JONESES' TELEPHONE]
"Now, we won't be selfish with our telephone, will we, dear? We will
let a few friends use it occasionally--it will be such a pleasure and
a convenience," and Mrs. Jones stood off and looked admiringly at the
new telephone.
"By all means. It is here and it may as well be doing some one a
service as to stand idle--and I like to feel that a friend isn't
afraid to ask a favor of me now and then. Yes, I suppose that
telephone will save us many a car-fare during the year. You can use it
to do your marketing, instead of tiring yourself out and wasting half
a day three or four times a week; and days when I forget things, think
how easy it will be to telephone and remind me. Why, it will entirely
do away with the need for strings to tie around my fingers."
"Of course it will. I'm sure that what we'll save on strings and
car-fare will pay the rent of the instrument," joyously responded Mrs.
Jones, who had no great head for figures.
Thus hope and kindly intentions presided at the inauguration of the
Joneses' telephone.
Three months passed, and the great invention had carried much
information--useful and otherwise--not only to its owners, but to the
entire neighborhood as well. There were even days when the Joneses
questioned whether they were not running a public telephone, so often
did the bell ring. It is true, it had not quite paid for itself in the
anticipated saving of car-fares and finger strings; still, it had
certainly been a great comfort, and "Well, we'll just face the music
and call it a luxury," said Jones, as he put away the receipt for his
first quarter's rent; "especially for our friends," he added, with
just a touch of bitterness.
Scarce twenty-four hours after this philosophical stand was taken,
Mrs. Jones, who was rather a light sleeper, was aroused by a violent
and prolonged ringing. It was six o'clock and Sunday morning--a day
and hour usually dedicated to undisturbed slumber. After a brief
debate in her own mind as to whether the house was on fire or the
milkman was ringing, she realized that it was the telephone bell. She
hastily donned slippers and gown and ran down-stairs. In reply to her
interrogative "Yes?" (Mrs. Jones could never bring herself to say
"Hello!") came the following, in measured and clerical tones:
"It is Mr. Brown--Reverend Mr. Brown, speaking."
"Oh, yes?" instinctively covering her half-clad feet in the folds of
her gown.
"I believe you live near the Reverend Mr. Smith, and are a member of
his church."
"Yes."
"Will you be good enough to send to him, and ask if he can spare his
curate to take Mr. Brown's early service for him, as he is called
away. I would be glad if you would send immediately, as I must have
his answer within fifteen minutes. Thank you. Please call up 1001,"
and snap went the telephone.
Mrs. Jones looked at her raiment and reflected that her one servant
was at mass and would not be back for an hour. She went slowly
up-stairs.
"Tom, Tom dear, wake up."
"What is it?"
"The Reverend Brown has telephoned to know whether the Reverend Smith
can send his curate to take his early service."
"Well, what in the world have I got to do with the peddling out of
early services?" snapped Jones, as he turned and shook up his
pillows.
"He has to have an answer to his message within fifteen minutes."
"Well, let Susan take it," settling back comfortably.
"But Susan has gone to mass."
"And I suppose that means that I am to be turned out of my bed at
daybreak, and canter half a mile!" cried Jones, in a high and excited
voice, as he bounced from his bed and began to grope sleepily for his
clothes. His toilet was made amidst grumblings of "Confound their
early services, why can't they stay in bed like Christians, instead of
prowling about, and sending men out in the chilly morning air," etc.,
etc.
Jones's temper was soured for the day, and that night, as he was
winding his watch, he said severely, "Jane, I'm going to draw the line
at delivering messages. Tom, Dick, and Harry can come here and bellow
into the telephone until they are hoarse, but I'll be switched if I'll
be messenger boy any longer."
But messages continued to come and go, increasing rather than
decreasing in frequency. People in the neighborhood fell into the
habit of saying to friends in distant parts of the city, when leaving
a question open: "Just telephone me when you make up your mind. I
haven't a telephone myself, but the Joneses have, and they are very
obliging about letting me use it."
So the fact that a telephone was owned by an obliging family
circulated almost as rapidly as if it had been a lie.
There were times when Mrs. Jones hadn't the face to ask Susan to stop
her work and carry these messages, so she carried them herself--trying
to keep up her self-respect by combining an errand of her own in the
same direction. There were a few messages, however, which remained
forever indignantly shut within the telephone; as, for instance, that
of the little girl, which came in a shrill, piping voice:
"Mrs. Jones, will you send your servant over to Mrs. Graham's to ask
Milly where she got that perfectly delicious delight she gave me the
other day, and tell her to be quick about it, please, for I'm
waiting."
And another which came in chuffy, distorted, conversational
English--regular "chappie" English, very hard to understand, but
which she finally straightened out into: "I say there--aw--oh--is that
you, Mrs. Jones? Sorry to trouble you, but would you be so awfully
good as to send word to Mrs. Bruce--aw--that I'm awfully cut up
about it, but I won't be able to dine there to-night. Aw--I
wouldn't trouble you, but it's so awfully hot I can't go round to
explain to her--you know. Thanks, awfully." The telephone was closed,
and the awfully-cut-up young man, whose sole claim on Mrs. Jones
was that they had once met at a party, was left to be healed by time.
He had for company in his fate the enthusiastic tennis-player, who, in
the midst of "a little summer shower," summoned Mrs. Jones.
"I want to speak to Flannigan, the gardener."
"This is not Flannigan's telephone."
"And who is speaking?"
"Mrs. Jones."
"Oh, well, Mrs. Jones, I can give my message to you just as well. I
want you to tell Flannigan to come and roll the tennis ground at once.
He will understand. Tell him right away, please."
"Flannigan does not live here."
"Well, you can send him word, I suppose," in a surprised and offended
voice, "to oblige a _lady_. It is _Miss Mortimer_ who is speaking,"
and there was an impressive silence. Mrs. Jones remembered Miss
Mortimer as a high-stepping young woman whom she had met at a friend's
house, and who had given her the impression of taking an inventory of
her. So Mrs. Jones took pleasure in replying, "Miss Mortimer probably
does not know that she is addressing a private telephone. Good day."
But it was Jones, the luckless Jones, who seemed set aside for the
cruel buffeting of the telephoning public. One night, which he will
ever point to as the wildest and wettest night he has known, he had
settled himself into his most comfortable chair, with a pile of new
magazines beside him, when he was disturbed by a summons from the
telephone. He responded with readiness, for he was rather expecting a
call from his partner, and to his cheerful "Hello, old fellow, I'm
here," came, in a sputtering and wind-tossed voice, "Will you please
tell Mrs. Goodson that as it is so stormy her daughter will not go
home to-night?"
Jones turned and confronted his wife, and for a time words refused to
come.
"Well, this is a little too much! Now think of an unknown voice
barking at me to go out into a storm like this and tell the Goodsons
that their daughter will not be at home to-night!"
The Goodsons lived just six squares away.
"And what will you do, dear? Why didn't you say plainly that you would
not and could not go out into a storm like this--that they must send a
messenger?"
"They shut me off without giving me time to answer."
"Well, call them up. Call them up at once."
"Jane, please have some sense. How do I know where Miss Goodson has
gadded off to? How do I know what number to call up?"
"Well, I just wouldn't go."
"Oh, I'll have to. They are friends, and if they are expecting that
girl of theirs home to-night and she doesn't come Mrs. Goodson will go
out of her mind."
So Jones drove himself forth, clad in righteous indignation and a
waterproof coat. The cold rain lashed him and the wind belabored his
umbrella, and he was more than once obliged to pause under friendly
porches to get his breath. At last the home of the Goodsons was
reached, and spent and weary he staggered up the steps. Goodson
himself opened the door.
"Hello, Jones, you're no fair weather friend indeed. Come in, come
in."
"No, I'm too wet," he answered, pointedly (and he felt like adding
"and too mad"). "I only came to tell you that Miss Goodson won't be at
home to-night."
"My daughter! She is at home. Don't you hear her playing on the piano
now? Come into the vestibule, anyway."
Jones walked in, with the rain streaming from his coat.
"Katey!" called Mr. Goodson to his wife. "Here is Jones come to say
that Julia won't be home to-night."
"What?" demanded Mrs. Goodson, appearing in the hall and regarding
Jones as if he were a mild sort of lunatic; "_Julia is_ at home."
"Well, I don't understand it," said Jones, plaintively. "I was rung up
half an hour ago, and asked to come and tell you that your daughter
wouldn't be at home on account of the storm."
"And do you mean to say that you stand ready to turn out at all hours
and deliver messages free of cost?" cried Goodson.
"It looks that way."
"Well, you are an ass!"
"Don't compliment me too freely, Goodson, I can't take in much more;
I'm soaked as it is."
Mrs. Goodson stood thinking. "Who could have been meant? Oh, I've just
thought! It must be that Mrs. Goodson who sews for Mrs. Jones and me.
And she has a daughter--a typewriter down town--and she has friends
living in the suburbs. She has doubtless gone there to dinner and
concluded to stay all night. But she lives just around the corner from
you."
Goodson laughed loudly and brutally. "A bonny sort of a night for a
respectable family man like you, Jones, to be skylarking around
carrying messages for typewriting maidens!"
"Oh, come now, that's a little too much!"
"Well, old man, I'll show my gratitude for your friendly intentions
toward me by going round to the telephone people the first thing in
the morning, and complaining of you. You've no right to be running
opposition to the public telephones in this way."
"_If_ you only would!" and Jones wrung his friend's hand while tears
of thankfulness welled up to his eyes.
Once in the street, he longed for a contemptuous enemy to kick him
briskly to the door of the Widow Goodson. The latter was evidently
about to retire, as it was a long time before she responded to his
ring. When, finally, she did come, she heard him calmly through and
then answered languidly: "Yes, I didn't much expect Bella home
to-night, for she said if it come on to rain she thought she'd stay
with her cousins. Good night. Quite drizzly, isn't it?" peering out
into the darkness.
Full of bitterness, Jones turned homeward. It seemed to him that his
cup was full; and so it was, for it refused to hold more. As he
entered his home, chilled without but hot within, he was greeted by an
unfamiliar voice coming from the regions of the telephone.
"Give me Blair's," it said. "Is that Blair's? Is
that--Blair's--B-l-a-i-r-'s, do you understand? Oh, yes, it is you, is
it, Mrs. Blair? Well, say I want to speak to Miss McCrea--Oh--pshaw!
you must know her--she's the young lady that works for you. Oh, she's
out, is she? Well, when she comes in, tell her Miss Doolan told you to
say that Mr. Brennan has broke his leg--she'll know, he drives
Judson's horses--and me and Mrs. Judson want to know whether he's to
go to the hospital or to his friends. You can send your answer to No.
999. They'll let me know. Give Miss McCrea my love and tell her not to
worry about Mr. Brennan. Good-by."
Jones confronted a stately creature as she stepped into the hall.
"Look here, young woman, who are you?"
"I'm Miss Doolan, and I'm stopping at Judson's--as housemaid," she
answered, so taken aback that for the moment her self-possession
failed her.
"And to whom have you been telephoning?"
"To Blair's--Judge Blair's, over on the avenue--a friend of mine stops
there."
"And are you in the habit of calling up ladies in that fashion?"
"It's a very good fashion, for all _I_ can see," she retorted
impudently.
"And what business have you to order an answer sent here for me to
carry on a night like this?"
"Mrs. Judson and me took you for a _gentleman_, sor, and we thought
you wouldn't mind obliging ladies."
"Nor do I, but I don't know either Mrs. Judson or you, and I don't
propose running errands for you."
"Oh, then don't bother yourself, sor--we can hire a boy," she flung
back with a scornful laugh as she bounced out.
"Now, Jane, I want you to distinctly understand that the last message
has been carried from this house. I have probably to-night sown the
seeds of pleurisy and pneumonia broadcast in my system; I have walked
twelve squares to deliver a message to the wrong person; we have had a
baggage here using our telephone as if it were her own, and we have
been at the beck and call of the unpaying public for the last six
months. Now, if the telephone people are not here by noon to-morrow,
to threaten legal proceedings against me (Goodson has promised to
complain of me) for undermining their business, I shall have that
wretched instrument dragged away, body and soul, and we will try some
other form of economy in the future."