Chesterton, however, presently elucidated. She coughed a little first, conscious that to volunteer a remark wasn't quite within her idea of the perfect parlourmaid, and then she said, 'It's owing to local convenience, ma'am. We find it indispensable in the isolated situation of the 'ouse. We gives our orders to the tradesmen by means of the telephone. Mr. Wemyss installed it for that purpose, he says, and objects to trunk calls because of the charges and the waste of Mr. Wemyss's time at the other end, ma'am.'
'Oh,' said Miss Entwhistle.
'If you please, ma'am,' said Chesterton.
Miss Entwhistle said nothing more. With her eyes fixed on her plate in order to avoid those other eyes, she wondered what she had better do. It was half-past eight, and Everard hadn't rung up. If he were going to be anxious enough not to mind the trunk-call charge he would have been anxious enough before this. That he hadn't rung up showed he regarded Lucy's indisposition as slight. What, then, would he say to her uninvited presence there? Nothing, she was afraid, that would be really hospitable. And she had just eaten a pudding of his. It seemed to curdle up within her.
'No, no coffee, thank you,' she said hastily, on Chesterton's inquiring if she wished it served in the library. She had had dinner because she couldn't help herself, urged to it by the servants, but she needn't proceed to extras. And the library,—wasn't it in the library that Everard was sitting the day that poor smiling thing ... yes, she remembered Lucy telling her so. No, she would not have coffee in the library.
But now about telephoning. Really the only thing to do, the only way of dignity, was to ring him up. Useless waiting any more for him to do it; evidently he wasn't going to. She would ring him up, tell him she was there, and ask—she clung particularly to the doctor idea, because his presence would justify hers if the doctor hadn't better look in in the morning.
Thus it was that, sitting quiet in their basement, the Twites were startled about nine o'clock that evening by the telephone bell. It sounded more uncanny than ever up there, making all that noise by itself in the dark; and when, hurrying up anxiously to it, Twite applied his ear, all that happened was that an extremely short-tempered voice told him to hold on.
Twite held on, listening hard and hearing nothing.
'Say 'Ullo, Twite,' presently advised Mrs. Twite from out of the anxious silence at the foot of the kitchen stairs.
''Ullo,' said Twite half-heartedly.