It was dull and uninspiring and lonely in the dark cubby-hole, after the lights and the constant work and companionship of the Exchange. There was much more leisure, too, than at the Exchange.
Daisy at first tried to enliven this leisure by reading. She loved to read; book or magazine—it was all the same to Daisy, so long as the hero and heroine at last outwitted the villain and came together at the altar.
But there are drawbacks to reading all day—even to reading union-made love stories, by eight-candle-power light and with everlasting interruption from the switchboard. So Daisy, by way of amusement, began to “listen in.â€�
“Listening in� is a plug-shifting process whereby the telephone-operator may hear any conversation over the wire. In some States, I understand, it is a misdemeanor. But perhaps there is no living operator who has not done it. In some private exchanges it is so common a custom that the cry of “Fish!� warns every other operator in the room that a particularly listenable talk is going on. This same cry of “Fish� is an invitation for all present to listen in.
(Yes, your telephonic love-talk, your fierce love-spats and your sacredest love-secrets have been avidly heard—and possibly repeated—again and again, by Central. Remember that, next time. When you hear a faint click on the wire during your conversation,—and sometimes when you don’t,—an operator is pretty certain to be listening in.)
At first Daisy was amused by what she heard. The parsimonious butcher-order of the house’s richest woman, the hiccoughed excuses of a husband whom business detained downtown, the vapid chatter of lad and lass, the scolding of slow dressmakers, the spicy anecdotes told by half-hour phone-gabblers—all these were a pleasant variation on the day’s routine. But at last, they began to pall. And just as they waxed tiresome—romance began.
The voice in Apartment 60—a clear voice, girlish and vibrant—called up 9999-Z Worth. And Worth 9999-Z replied in a tone that fairly throbbed with eager longing. That was the beginning. Shamelessly—soon rapturously—Daisy Reynolds listened in.
The voice in Apartment 60 belonged to a girl named Madeline. And Worth 9999-Z (whose first name, by the way, was Karl) spoke that foreign-sounding name Madeline as though it were a phrase of hauntingly sweet church music. He and Madeline had known each other, it appeared, for some months; but only recently had they made the divine discovery of their mutual love. It was then that the phone talks had begun—the talks that varied in number from three to seven a day, and in length from three to thirty minutes.
Always, now, promptly at nine o’clock in the morning, Karl called up his sweetheart. And always, an hour or so later, she called him up for a return-dialogue. Their talk was not mushy; it was beautiful. It thrilled with a love as deathless as the stars, a love through whose longing ran a current of unhappiness that Daisy could not understand.
Daisy grew to live for those talks. They became part of her very life—the loveliest part. She was curt, almost snappish, when other calls interfered with the bliss of listening-in. More than once she shamelessly broke off the connection when Madeline chanced to be talking to some old bore at a time when Karl sought to speak to her.