WIRED LOVE: A ROMANCE OF DOTS AND DASHES BY ELLA CHEEVER THAYER. "The old, old story,"--in a new, new way. DEDICATION. DEDICATED TO THE MEMORY OF A DEAR FRIEND BUT FOR WHOM THIS LITTLE WORK HAD NEVER BEEN [Transcriber's Note. The dedication was printed in American Railroad dialect of Morse. It cannot easily be represented in ASCII as it requires dashes of different lengths] TABLE OF CONTENTS I. Sounds from a Distant "C." II. At the Hotel Norman III. Visible and Invisible Friends IV. Neighborly Calls V. Quimby Bursts Forth in Eloquence VI. Collapse of the Romance VII. "Good-By" VIII. The Feast IX. Unexpected Visitors X. The Broken Circuit Reunited XI. Miss Kling Telegraphically Baffled XII. Crosses on the Line XIII. The Wrong Woman XIV. Quimby Accepts the Situation XV. One Summer Day XVI. O. K. WIRED LOVE. CHAPTER I. SOUNDS FROM A DISTANT "C." -... -- .-.. -. Just a noise, that is all. But a very significant noise to Miss Nathalie Rogers, or Nattie, as she was usually abbreviated; a noise that caused her to lay aside her book, and jump up hastily, exclaiming, with a gesture of impatience:-- "Somebody always 'calls' me in the middle of every entertaining chapter!" For that noise, that little clatter, like, and yet too irregular to be the ticking of a clock, expressed to Nattie these four mystic letters:-- "B m--X n;" which same four mystic letters, interpreted, meant that the name, or, to use the technical word, "call," of the telegraph office over which she was present sole presiding genius, was "B m," and that "B m" was wanted by another office on the wire, designated as "X n." A little, out-of-the-way, country office, some fifty miles down the line, was "X n," and, as Nattie signaled in reply to the "call" her readiness to receive any communications therefrom, she was conscious of holding in some slight contempt the possible abilities of the human portion of its machinery. For who but an operator very green in the profession would stay _there_? Consequently, she was quite unprepared for the velocity with which the telegraph alphabet of sounds in dots and dashes rattled over the instrument, appropriately termed a "sounder," upon which messages are received, and found herself wholly unable to write down the words as fast as they came. "Dear me!" she thought, rather nervously, "the country is certainly ahead of the city this time! I wonder if this smart operator is a lady or gentleman!" And, notwithstanding all her efforts, she was compelled to "break"--that is, open her "key," thereby breaking the circuit, and interrupting "X n" with the request, "Please repeat." "X n" took the interruption very good-naturedly--it was after dinner--and obeyed without expressing any impatience. But, alas! Nattie was even now unable to keep up with this too expert individual of uncertain sex, and was obliged again to "break," with the humiliating petition, "Please send slower!"