He looked surprised and I plunged heavily, giving the first name I could think of, which happened to be the one he had mentioned in the taxi—his own, in fact. He looked still more suspicious and I knew it had been a mistake, especially as close to where he had been working were two envelopes addressed to me. I am certain that if my wife had not called me at that moment I should have gone permanently purple all over.
When I got back (I tried to get my wife to go, but she said she would rather I went, and that I wasn't really as red as I felt)—when I got back I could see that it had dawned upon him that I had wheedled him there without his knowing exactly where he was, and that he was determined not to be had. He asked me to sign for the installation.
Alas, I could not do that. It was only then that I realised that I am constitutionally honest; besides they might find me out.
We both tried to turn his thoughts to pleasanter topics. Perhaps asking him to have a glass of port was a mistake there are times when even bribery is bad policy. Briefly, after a mumbled remark that "there was something fishy," he refused to leave the box. Dry-eyed we watched him take it all down and depart in a dudgeon. We were left with a vision of shameless visitors with their twopenny calls and interminable bills running up even while we were away on our holidays.
"Let us," I said hoarsely—"let us go and look at our child; she is all we have left now."
Moodily we turned to go upstairs. In the hall we stopped dead. Upon the floor was the wretched paper which my Victorian conscience and my twentieth-century caution had prevented me from signing.
"He must," said my wife with her usual perspicacity, "have dropped it on his way out. Let's see who the box was really meant for."
Picking it up I read aloud in cold firm tones my own name and address. The box had been meant for us after all.
We got it in the end. It came one morning, like the flowers in Spring, quite suddenly, and we spent a whole day telephoning to our friends to tell them we had a coin-box at last. I also wrote a letter full of gratitude to the telephone people and got the reply that, "owing to the shortage of plant, etc.," they regretted that for the time being they could not grant my request for a telephone.