The telephone rang—that hateful telephone in the dark outer hall, under the stairs. This was one of the "modern conveniences" of the apartment-house, and it was her mother’s duty to attend it, and by screaming, by ringing the down-stairs bells, or, when they were broken, by toiling up the stairs, to apprise the tenant whom it summoned. They both hated the thing. When it rang, they would sigh, "Oh, that telephone!" and go wearily to serve it.
It was a surprise and a great relief to hear Eddie’s voice on the telephone, for Angelica had been half afraid that the etiquette prevailing among rich people would prevent any further communication. She wasn’t even sure as to whether or not she was expected to go back to Buena Vista. But Eddie wasn’t that sort. His voice was just as it had always been—official, but quite kindly.
"Hello!" he said. "How’s your mother?"
"Much better."
"That’s good! Then have you any idea when you’ll come back to us, Angelica?"
"In a week. Next Saturday, the doctor says."
"Good! I’ll call for you next Saturday afternoon, when I leave the office. And I say, Angelica, don’t you want Courtland to bring you some of the things you left at our place?"
"I would like a few of them," she answered, gratefully.
And the busy, harassed Eddie, sitting in his office, with impatient men waiting to see him, with his stenographer pen in hand beside him, with a telegraph-boy behind him who required a reply, in the midst of the rattle of typewriters, the ringing of telephone-bells, the clicking of the ticker, hoarse, excited voices, all this frenzied life which he had caused to exist and directed and sustained—he took time to write down at Angelica’s dictation a list of things she had left behind her in his house.
It touched him, that list, it was so obviously the list of a poor person—things that he, or any one he knew, would have bought duplicates of without a second thought; things one would hardly bother to pack. He got them together himself when he reached home that evening—a tooth-brush, a cake of perfumed soap, a half-empty box of cheap writing-paper, hairpins, a nail-brush.