She: “Don’t you hear him, mumbling and grumbling there?”
Grinnidge: “Well, I swear! Cash value of twenty-five dollars, and untold toil in coloring it!”
Ransom, listening with an air of mystification: “Who’s that?”
She: “Gummidge, Grimmidge—whatever you called him. Oh!” She arrests herself in consternation. “Now I have done it!”
He: “Done what?”
She: “Oh—nothing!”
He: “I don’t understand. Do you mean to say that my friend Grinnidge’s room is on the other aide of the wall, and that you can hear him talk through the register?” She preserves the silence of abject terror. He stoops over the register, and calls down it. “Grinnidge! Hallo!”
Grinnidge: “Hallo, yourself!”
Ransom, to Miss Reed: “Sounds like the ghostly squeak of the phonograph.” To Grinnidge: “What’s the trouble?”
Grinnidge: “Smashed my pipe. Dozed off and let it drop on this infernal register.”