“Shall I take this with me?” he asked, and I said “By all means.”

That was all.

I gave ten minutes to reflection and to the possibility of Arthur’s coming back and pleading, on his knees, to be allowed to restore that defective larynx.  Then I went straight upstairs to the telephone and rang up the Central office.  When they replied “Hello,” I said, in the moderate and concentrated tone which we all use through telephones, “Can you give me New York?”

Poppa was in New York, and in an emergency poppa and I always turn to one another.  There was a delay, during which I listened attentively, with one eye closed—­I believe it is the sign of an unbalanced intellect to shut one eye when you use the telephone, but I needn’t go into that—­and presently I got New York.  In a few minutes more I was accommodated with the Fifth Avenue Hotel.

“Mr. T.P.  Wick, of Chicago,” I demanded.

“Is his room number Sixty-two?”

That is the kind of mind which you usually find attached to the New York end of a trans-American telephone.  But one does not bandy words across a thousand miles of country with a hotel clerk, so I merely responded: 

“Very probably.”

There was a pause, and then the still small voice came again.

“Mr. Wick is in bed at present.  Anything important?”

I reflected that while I in Chicago was speaking to the hotel clerk at half-past nine o’clock, the hotel clerk in New York was speaking to me at eleven.  This in itself was enough to make our conversation disjointed.

“Yes,” I responded, “it is important.  Ask Mr. Wick to get out of bed.”

Sufficient time elapsed to enable poppa to put on his clothes and come down by the elevator, and then I heard: 

“Mr. Wick is now speaking.”

“Yes, poppa,” I replied, “I guess you are.  Your old American accent comes singing across in a way that no member of your family would ever mistake.  But you needn’t be stiff about it.  Sorry to disturb you.”

Poppa and I were often personal in our intercourse.  I had not the slightest hesitation in mentioning his American accent.

“Hello, Mamie!  Don’t mention it.  What’s up?  House on fire?  Water pipes burst?  Strike in the kitchen?  Sound the alarm—­send for the plumber—­raise Gladys’s wages and sack Marguerite.”

“My engagement to Mr. Page is broken.  Do you get me?  What do you suggest?”

I heard a whistle, which I cannot express in italics, and then, confidentially: 

“You don’t say so!  Bad break?”

“Very,” I responded firmly.

“Any details of the disaster available?  What?”

“Not at present,” I replied, for it would have been difficult to send them by telephone.

I could hear poppa considering the matter at the other end.  He coughed once or twice and made some indistinct inquiries of the hotel clerk.  Then he called my attention again.