She stopped the car in front of the telegraph-office. The little operator, scenting a romance, scuttled out of the door with an envelope in her hand and a different look on her face from the one she had worn when she went to her lunch. To tell the truth, she had not had much faith in that soldier nor in the message he had sent “collect.” She hadn’t believed any answer would come, or at least any favorable one.
Now she hurried across the pavement to the car, studying Mary Amber’s red tam as she talked, and wondering whether she couldn’t make one like it out of the red lining of an old army cape she had.
“Yer message’s come,” she announced affably. “Come just after I got back. An’ I got yer check all made out fer yah. You sign here. See? Got anybody to ’dentify yah? ’Tain’t necessary, see? I c’n waive identification.”
“I can identify him,” spoke up Mary Amber with cool dignity; and the soldier looked at her wonderingly. That was a very different tone from the one she had used when she came after him. After all, what did Mary Amber know about him?
He looked at the check half wonderingly as if it were not real. His head felt very queer. The words of the message seemed all jumbled. He crumpled it in his hand.
“Ain’t yah going to send an answer?” put in the little operator aggrievedly, hugging the thin muslin sleeves of her little soiled shirt-waist to keep from shivering. “He says to wire him immediately. He says it’s important. I guess you didn’t take notice to the message.”
The soldier tried to smooth out the crumpled paper with his numb fingers; and Mary Amber, seeing that he was feeling very miserable, took it from him, and capably put it before him.
“Am sending you a thousand. Wire me your post-office address immediately. Good news. Important.
“(Signed)
“Arthur J. Watkins.”
“I guess I can’t answer that now,” said the soldier, trying his best to keep his teeth from chattering. “I don’t just know—”
“Here, I’ll write it for you,” said Mary with sudden understanding. “You better have it sent in Aunt Rill’s care; and then you can have it forwarded anywhere, you know. I’ll write it for you;” and she took a silver pencil from the pocket of her coat, and wrote the telegram rapidly on a corner she tore from the first message, handing it out for his inspection and then passing it on to the operator, who gathered it in capably.