The Story of a Doctor's Telephone

CHAPTER I.

The hands of the clock were climbing around toward eleven and the doctor had not returned. Mary, a drowsiness beginning to steal over her, looked up with a yawn. Then she fell into a soliloquy:

To bed, or not to bed—that is the question:

Whether 'tis wiser in the wife to wait for a belated spouse,

Or to wrap the drapery of her couch about her

And lie down to pleasant dreams?

To dream! perchance to sleep!

And by that sleep to end the headache

And the thousand other ills that flesh is heir to,