A moment's pause, then: "Birdie—I mean Miriam. You are Archie?"
My worst fears seemed about to be realized. I felt like the pain-racked husband in the little play At the Telephone. I scarcely dared to listen. "This is Mr. Fairfax, Mrs. McCaffrey. What has happened? Tell me quickly."
"Letitia's awful sick, and the doctor's coming to see what the matter is."
The perspiration was trickling down my face. The roots of my hair seemed to tighten. Letitia was too ill to answer the telephone! The familiarity of cook's allusion to my wife passed unnoticed in the wave of apprehension that swept over me.
"Telephone at once for the doctor, and I'll come right back," I commanded.
"The doctor's telephone doesn't work," was the reply, "and your wife has gone to fetch him. Me sister, Mrs. O'Flaherty, was too tired to go, and I had to stay with Letitia."
A ray of light! I laughed—almost hysterically. The sudden removal of the nervous tension nearly made me collapse. It was the McCaffrey brat that was "awful sick," and as I hung up the receiver, I experienced nothing but a sense of utter thankfulness. Our little dinner most assuredly was off, and the Holy Grail was lost. Then a normal sense of vexation set in, and I felt indignant as I thought of Letitia trotting off for De Voursney, while I was left, lamenting.
If I had only been strong-minded enough to dine in town alone, and go to the opera in solitary state! Now that I knew Letitia was unharmed, I could easily have done this, and telephoned my determination to her. Unluckily, I was not built for such a course. Such stringency might be effective, but it was beyond me. I could not take my pleasures wifelessly. The only thing to do was to go home, and I should have been impelled to this course, even if I had been expected to sit up all night with cook's brat—and I was not at all sure that Letitia would not suggest this.
My mood had changed, and despondency had set in. I put my clothes into the dress-suit-case, locked up the office, and went home as rapidly as I could, after having bestowed the two ten-dollar Parsifal tickets upon the elevator boy, who rather ruefully told me that he had seats for the Third Avenue Theater, where they were playing a pretty little thing called Too Proud to Beg. I was not too proud, however, and I begged him to take twenty-dollars' worth of opera, for my sake, which he promised to do.