“You're the very identical woman that told me when I 'phoned awhile ago that you'd send him right down. It's the very same voice.”
“There is a mistake somewhere,” reiterated Mary, patiently, “but I'll send the doctor as soon as he gets in if you will give me your name.”
“I'll tell ye agin, then, that he's to come to Lige Thornton's.”
“Very well. I'll send him,” and Mary left the 'phone much mystified. “She was in dead earnest—and so was I. I can't understand it.” Glancing out of the window she saw her tall, young daughter coming up the walk. The solution came with lightning quickness—strange she didn't think of that, Gertrude had answered. She remembered now that others had thought their voices very much alike, especially over the 'phone. “If the woman had not talked in such a cyclonic way I would have thought of it,” she reflected.
When the young girl entered the room her mother said, “Gertrude, you answered the 'phone awhile ago, didn't you?”
“About twenty minutes ago. Some woman was so anxious for father to come right away that I just ran down to the office to see that he went.”
“That was very thoughtful of you, dear, but it's little credit we're getting for it.”
She related the dialogue that had just taken place and mother and daughter laughed in sympathy.
“Why, Mamma, we couldn't forget if we wanted to. That telephone is an Old Man of the Sea to both of us—is now and ever shall be, world without end.”
“But did you find your father at the office?”