He slammed the money down, and
laughed aloud at the thought of the surprise he was about to give
them all.
The telephone bell rang out clear and distinct at the precise moment
when his wife, with knife and fork in hand, was preparing to carve
the turkey. She was a nervous lady, and twice that week had dreamed
that she had seen her husband without being able to get to him. On
the first occasion she had seen him enter a dry-goods store in
Broadway, and hastening across the road had followed him in. He was
hardly a dozen yards in front of her, but before she could overtake
him all the young lady assistants had rushed from behind their
counters and, forming a circle round her, had refused to let her
pass, which in her dream had irritated her considerably. On the next
occasion he had boarded a Brooklyn car in which she was returning
home. She had tried to attract his attention with her umbrella, but
he did not seem to see her; and every time she rose to go across to
him the car gave a jerk and bumped her back into her seat. When she
did get over to him it was not her husband at all, but the gentleman
out of the Quaker Oats advertisement. She went to the telephone,
feeling--as she said herself afterwards--all of a tremble.
That you could speak from Colorado to New York she would not then
have believed had you told her. The thing was in its early stages,
which may also have accounted for the voice reaching her strange and
broken.
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