Wired Love by Ella Cheever Thayer (13 ebook reader txt) 📕

“Off?” questioned Nattie, with a sudden fall in her mental temperature.

“Yes, I am going to a station five miles below to substitute, today. The operator there is obliged to go away, and couldn’t find anyone competent to do his work, and as there was a fellow that could do mine, he comes here and I go there.”

“Oh, dear! what shall I do all day?” said Nattie, sinking into a chair, very much aggrieved.

“I am very sorry, but I couldn’t well avoid accommodating him. But what will you do when I leave entirely, if you can’t get along without me one day? happy I, to be so necessary to your existence!”

“But there is no prospect of your leaving at present, is there?” asked Nattie, forgetting in her alarm at such a possibility to challenge the last of his remark.

“There is some probability of it now,” C responded. “I will tell you all about it tomorrow. I may come nearer to you; near enough even for you to see that twinkle.”

“You don’t mean you have a prospect of an office here in the city?” questioned Nattie, not knowing whether she would be glad or sorry if such were the case.

“Not exactly,” replied C. “I haven’t time to explain; train is coming, so⁠—”

“Where did you say you were going today?” broke in Nattie quickly.

“B a⁠—five miles down the line nearer you, but not on this wire. Used to be, you know, but switched on wire number twenty-seven last week,” C responded so hurriedly, that Nattie could hardly read it, although so accustomed to his style of making his dots and dashes; for, with the key, as with the pen, all operators have their own peculiar manner of writing.

“Ah, yes! I remember,” responded Nattie quickly. “That hateful operator signing ‘M’ had it, that used to be fighting for the circuit always, and breaking in when we were talking. I wouldn’t have gone for him.”

“Couldn’t well avoid it. Here is train. Goodbye; shall miss you terribly, but will be with you again tomorrow. Goodbye.”

“Goodbye. I am lonesome already,” Nattie answered.

As C made no reply, it was supposable he had gone, and probably had to run for the train, thought Nattie, as she took off her hat rather dejectedly.

A broken companionship of any kind must ever leave a certain sense of loneliness, and this was none the less true now on account of the unique circumstances. Indeed, until today she had not fully realized how necessary C had become to her telegraphic life. Naturally, she had woven a sort of romance about him who was a friend “so near and yet so far.” Perhaps too, a certain yearning for tenderness in her lonely heart, a feeling that every woman knows, found something, very pleasant in being always greeted with “Good morning, my dear,” and hearing the last thing at night, “Good night, little girl at B m.”

Miss Kling undoubtedly would have been shocked at being thus addressed even on the wire, by a strange person⁠—a person certainly, although unseen; but Nattie, used to the license that distance gave, whether wisely or unwisely, had never thought it necessary to check the familiarity.

Pondering over what he had hinted about leaving permanently, in the leisure usually devoted to chatting with him, but which that day she hardly knew how to fill, Nattie wondered if, should they ever come face to face, they would feel like the old friends they were, or if the nearness would bring a constraint now unknown? Yet she was fain to confess she would like to see him and ascertain the personal appearance of one who occupied so much of her thoughts. But how strange it would be, if, after all their friendly talks and gay confidences, he should pass out of the way that was both their ways now, and they never know anything more about each other than that one was C and one was N! something not impossible either, or even improbable; for fate is a sort of switchboard, and a slight move will switch two lives onto wires far asunder, even as the moving of a peg or two will alter everything on the board that shows its power so little.

With such thoughts in her mind, Nattie was rather among the shadows that day, and presented no laughing face to the curious passersby, much to that opposite clerk’s relief, who came to the conclusion that she had once more recovered her senses.

About an hour before the time for closing the office, as she was counting over her cash, and thinking how glad she was that C would be back tomorrow, she became conscious of someone waiting her attention outside, and went forward, scarcely looking at him, expecting, of course, a message. But instead, the individual, who filled the air with a suffocating odor of musk, asked,

“You are the regular operator here, I suppose?”

With a start Nattie looked up, expecting a complaint, an occurrence often prefaced by some like question, and scrutinizing him more particularly, saw a short, rather stout young man, possessing an air of cheap assurance, hair that insisted on being red, notwithstanding the bear’s grease that covered it, teeth all at variance with each other, and seeming to rejoice obtrusively in the fact, and light blue eyes of a most insinuating expression, trimmed around with red.

“Yes,” Nattie replied as she took this survey. “I am.”

“You don’t know me, I suppose?” was the next question.

“No,” Nattie replied with a glance at the large mock diamond pin, and immense imitation amethyst ring he wore; “I certainly do not.”

“I think you are mistaken about that,” he rejoined, smiling at her in a most unpleasantly familiar manner.

Surprised and offended, Nattie drew back haughtily. “I think, rather, you are mistaken,” she said, stiffly. “May I inquire your business?”

With an air of easy confidence and familiar remonstrance, he replied,

“Come, now, don’t freeze a fellow; why, I came to see you. That’s my business and no other!”

“He is drunk,” thought Nattie, indignantly, but before she could reply he