“And ruin my boast that I have the most perfectly organized force and machinery in the state?  Not if I know myself,” answered Tolly, with business indignation and an utter lack of lover’s enthusiasm at the prospect of getting his lady-love by a ruse.

“Well, I don’t know what you are going to do,” I said, limply, as I saw that none of the things that had ever been acted before were within Tolly’s reach.

“I don’t know, either,” answered Tolly; and again his head dropped into his hands.

“What did she say the last time you asked her?” I questioned.  I considered it my duty to get to the bottom of the matter, as I had been called in consultation.

“Ask her?  Thunderation!  I never have asked her!  I’ve never got that near to her!” he exclaimed, in a perfect outburst of indignation.

Then I laughed.  I laughed so that Tolly had to pat me on the back to make me get my breath, and a sleeping mocking-bird scolded outright from a tree by the porch.

“Why don’t you do it by telephone?” I gasped.

“By George! that is the idea, all right, Betty!” Tolly exclaimed, with his face positively radiant.  I had flung his love troubles into a class of affairs that he could handle.  “I tell you what I am going to do.  I am going to have my wire chief cut Edith’s line and make me a direct connection with mine at about nine o’clock to-morrow morning, as that is the time he is in less of a rush with all the other things to attend to.  Then I’ll put it to her good and straight if she holds on to the receiver and hears me out.”

“But Edith might go over to Boliver to visit May Jessamine Ray for a week at nine o’clock to-morrow.  Oh, go do it to-night, Tolly!” I pleaded.

“And let that doll-faced girl at Central hear me?  Not much!” answered Tolly, indignantly.

“I didn’t mean that,” I answered.  “Go to her armed with your love, Tolly, and make—­make her listen to you.”

“Armed with a sand-bag to slug her would be more like it, if I expected to get anywhere with her.  No, you’ve hit it, Betty, and I’m going on down the street and see just where that Morris line goes into the trunk.  Hope Judson won’t have to run more than a mile of wire to make that connection.”  And with no more gratitude or good night than that Tolly went down the street with his head up among his telephone wires, just as Edith keeps hers in the clouds.  I hope some day they will run into each other so hard that they will crash out ignition sparks and take fire.

As I said, being so interested in Edith and Tolly, and trying to get her to postpone her visit until he could get the wires up between them both in a material and a sentimental sense, and also wanting to let Sam and Peter miss me sadly, I let quite a few days elapse without being in any of the events out at The Briers.  When I did go back I found that things had happened.

“Where’s Peter?” I asked, as Sam came to unload me and a huge bag of smoke iris that old Mrs. Johnson had given me for my garden.  There was also Byrd’s basket from mother, and a pair of small alligators that daddy had got from Florida for him, having run out of natural animal inhabitants of the Harpeth Valley.