"Minute 'm...."
In the glass beside her Cally caught a reflection of her head and bare shoulders, and her eyes were shining, the long and slightly tri-corner eyes so piquantly fringed. A minute--that was all it would take. A minute more and she would thread her way back through the glitter to Hugo and mamma, and Hugo at least would say well-done....
"Well, whatsermatter? There y' are!"
The soft voice said: "All right, Dr. Vivian. Ready now!... Hello! All right...."
"Hello," said Cally.
Then all sounds faded away, and out of a sudden great desert of silence, she heard a man's voice, clear though it came all the way from Meeghan's Grocery, across the street from the old Dabney House, back home.
"Hello?"
Mr. V.V.!
And the moment she heard that voice, Carlisle was aware that her feeling toward the owner of it had mysteriously changed somewhere in the last week, that he stood in her mind now almost as a friend. Had he not been, by the strangeness of fate, her one confidant in the world, who now could never think of her again as a poor little thing?...
"Dr. Vivian?... Can you guess who it is? Or did the operator give me away?"