"You see, I haven't any bird books right at hand—I'll send in to the reading-room. Will you hold the line, please?"
Miss Patterson turned to the stenographer and repeated Mrs. Mayo's description of the strange bird.
"Will you please ask Miss Bixby to look it up, and let me know as soon as possible?"
During the interval that followed, the operator at central asked three times: "Did you get them?" and three times Mrs. Mayo and Miss Patterson chanted in unison: "Yes; hold the line, please!"
Finally the messenger returned, remarking timidly: "He says it's a crow."
"A crow!" exclaimed Miss Patterson.
"A crow!" echoed Mrs. Mayo, at the other end of the wire, "oh, that is impossible. I know crows when I see them. Why, this has a ruff, and a magnificent red coloring about its head. Oh, it's no crow!"
"Whom did you see in there?" inquired Miss Patterson. "Miss Bixby?"
"No," replied the young and timid stenographer, "it was that young man—I don't know his name."
She had entered the library service only the week before.