"Who put all these ideas into your head, please? You are so young!"
She smiled, while blushing deeply.
"Won't you give me any credit for originality, Mr. Dalton? How can one tell where one picks up ideas? They are like pebbles in our pathway; sometimes we never even see them, but carelessly scuff them aside as we walk. Then the sun of somebody's genius shines out and shows them to be gems, and we hasten to pick them up and claim them for our own. I have been taught when to watch for the sun's shining—that's all!"
She waved her hand, nodded, and hurried out of the office, leaving Dalton gazing after her with an eager, baffled face.
CHAPTER XV.
MOTHER FLAHERTY'S TELEPHONE.
There was great merriment in Littleton over the advent of the telephone. The women gossips gathered with their babies in their arms and even the men (whom no one would venture thus to name) smoked and stood about in groups during all the long summer evenings, to discuss this latest marvel. Among them, with many differences of opinion, there was much laughter and disclaiming. Old Mrs. Flaherty declared, amid her giggles, that "the two eyes av the craythur fairly give her a turn," and when asked to explain she pointed to the gongs at the top of the apparatus. Lucy Hapgood had heard of live wires, and shrank from touching even the receiver till repeatedly assured there was no danger of electrocution. And when at last she did consent to put it to her ear, and heard her father calling to her from Cole's grocery, she shrieked with astonished awe. For the telephone was as little known in this hamlet as if it had been situated a thousand miles from the metropolis, instead of less than two-score. The limitations of poverty are great, and even fifty-cent fares to the city were seldom compassed, except where, possibly, a legal holiday and a wedding fell on the same day, and the occasion was made memorable by an outing. Even then the returned travelers would have little to relate, except such scenes as clustered around the great depot with its neighboring lodging-houses and saloons. Of parks, galleries, museums, libraries, and palatial dwellings, these tourists scarcely dreamed, and never thought to visit. All dread those things they do not understand, and these people would have told you they had no wish to see such places; they were out of their line.
So all of the older and more conservative Littletonians looked with open disfavor upon the new "speaking machines," and some absolutely refused to use them. In fact, a few did not hesitate to say such doings smacked of the evil one, and one old dame set her sudsy arms akimbo and stoutly defied the electricians to enter her house.
"You kin string up them wires from here to Jerichy, if you want to," she said sternly, letting her lance-like eyes rove in scornful leisure over their equipment, "but you can't bring 'em inside my dure. No, sir! I don't want any voices rousin' me up at all hours of the day an' night. If folks at 'tother end o' town wants to speak to me they knows where to find me. I'm a respictable widdy lady what keeps to home and minds my own washin', and they can't no man nor woman, nuther, get a chance to sass me through any mash-ine. No, sir! I know that young Early. He's got a scheme to see all thet's a-goin' on amongst us day and night, and I won't have it. Tain't decent, and they ain't no law on his side. So jest git along with you now, and don't take up my time a-wranglin', for I've got work to do, if you haven't."