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

“Well, we will have our wire at all events, and for once something shall be that Miss Kling will not know,” said Cyn exultantly.

Unconsciously the dreaded individual favored them, shortly after, by going to spend the evening with friends after her own heart⁠—very genteel, but in reduced circumstances:⁠—and as the instruments were all ready, and they had only been waiting for her absence, Clem went to work. He was assisted by the willing Jo, who argued that running a wire was solid work, and not romantic, and by Quimby, who viewed the arrangement as another formidable link in the chain of his rival, and clamored wildly for a “telephone,” because “anybody could use a telephone.” But that, as Clem said, was exactly what they did not want! Consequently Quimby, as he lent his aid, felt himself a very martyr. However, he was, by this time, “used to it, you know,”⁠—as he would have said⁠—having viewed himself in that light since his unwitting resurrection of C. Still, he sometimes fancied he saw a dim light shining ahead through the gloom⁠—a hope that Clem might be fascinated by Cyn. Many were, Quimby argued, so why should not Clem be? and certainly he talked with her more than he did with Nattie!

In Nattie’s room, they placed the instruments on a small shelf put up for the purpose, just outside her closet, and run the wire through the closet into the hall outside, and thence along, so close to the wall that it was not noticeable, except to those who knew, and then into Mrs. Simonson’s apartments. Here, no concealment was necessary, as Mrs. Simonson had been informed of the plan, and, although trembling lest the vials of Miss Kling’s wrath would be poured on her head, should that lady discover the arrangement, had no objections to offer, if they were positive “the electricity on the wire would not wear out the carpet, or injure the table”⁠—which was the terminus in Quimby and Clem’s room.

Having satisfied her on this point, they deemed it expedient not to show her the battery in their closet, fearing alarm lest it might eat through the room and overpower her.

“And now,” said Clem, gayly, when all was finished, and fortunately without attracting attention, not even Celeste being in the secret; “now, Quimby, we can dispense with that alarm clock we were intending to buy.”

“I⁠—I beg pardon, but I⁠—I don’t quite catch your meaning,” the martyr replied, in evident surprise.

“Why, Nat is to be our alarm clock!” explained Clem, laughing. “She is, from necessity, an early riser, and I shall depend on her to call on our wire at precisely six thirty every morning, and continue calling until I answer.”

“I certainly will,” Nattie replied. “But I will venture to predict that both you and Quimby will privately call me all sorts of names for doing it. It makes people so very cross to be aroused from a morning nap, you know!”

“It doesn’t make me cross, I⁠—I assure you; it⁠—it will be a pleasure!” quickly exclaimed Quimby, who was delighted with this idea of the alarm clock.

“I will report him if he shows the least symptom of growling, after that assertion!” Clem said to Nattie, somewhat to Quimby’s internal agitation, for, to tell the truth, he was not really quite certain of being in a state of rapture at six thirty every morning, even when awoke by the clatter of a sounder, of which the motive power was his inamorata.

“And now, to christen our wire!” Nattie, who was in high spirits, said gayly, and she ran over to her room, and a half hour’s chat with C followed before she went to bed. For a week after, however, she lived, as it were, on thorns, and came home every night half expecting an explosion.

None came, however. Miss Kling’s eyes were not as good as they once had been, what with their long service watching for that other self, and overlooking her neighbors; the hall was dark; she had no duplicate key to Nattie’s always-locked room, and the small wire, nestling close to the wall, was undiscovered; of course, she heard the clatter of the sounder, but this Nattie explained on the score of “practice.”

“Well, I am sure!” said Miss Kling, snappishly, “I should think you would get ‘practice’ enough at the office, without sitting up nights to do it!”

At which Nattie turned away to hide a blush, aware that C and she sometimes talked even into the small hours, in their zeal, doubtless, that the new wire should not rust out for lack of using.

But this telegraphic arrangement came hardest on poor Quimby, who, between his jealousy when the two were communicating, his inability to understand what was being said, and the impossibility of sleeping with such a clatter in the room, lost his appetite, and invoked anything but blessings on the head of “that Morse man,” who had made such things possible.

Cyn had no intention of being left out in the cold, and making Jo join her, began the study of telegraphy, and the two hammered away incessantly. It began to be observable, about this time, that Jo was very willing to be led about by the nose by Cyn. Why, was not so apparent; perhaps because there was no romance in it.

Cyn learned the quicker of the two, and she was soon able, slowly and uncertainly, to “call” Nattie, ask her to come over, or impart any little information, but was always driven frantic by the attempt to make out Nattie’s reply, however slowly written. Cyn tried to induce Quimby to overcome the horrors of those little black marks, the alphabet and their sounds, but he recoiled from the effort as hopeless.

However, whenever they made candy, as they often did, he had an opportunity of distinguishing himself, that he did not fail to improve. On the first occasion, so uneasy was he about a quiet conversation Clem and Nattie were having, that he absently put