Maybe it's just the ordinary joshing which goes on over
the toll lines in the off hours. But maybe it isn't. Wherever Sam is and
whoever he is, he is a danger to Homeburg. Perhaps he is a lineman at
Paynesville, and then again he may be a grocer in some crossroads town
near by, with a toll telephone in the back of his store. But if he talks
to Carrie long enough and skilfully enough, he will come up to Homeburg,
marry her, and bear her away to his lair, far from our bereaved ears.
We've lost several telephone girls that way, and when a telephone girl
knows all of your habits and customs and those of your friends, and can
tell just where to find you or to find whomever you want found, and has
the business of the town down to the smallest details stowed away in her
capable head, it messes things up dreadfully to have her leave us high
and dry and go to housekeeping--which any one can do.

Telephone girls are born, not made, in towns like Homeburg. We require
so much more of them than city folks do. When my wife wants to know if
hats are being worn at an afternoon reception, she calls up Carrie. Ten
to one Carrie has caught a scrap of conversation over the line and
knows. But if she hasn't, she will call up and find out. When a doctor
leaves his office to make a call, he calls up Carrie, and she faithfully
pursues him through town and country all day, if necessary. When we are
preparing for a journey, we do not go down to the depot until we have
called up Carrie and have found out if the train is on time, and if it
isn't, we ask her to call us when it is discovered by the telegraph
operator. And when our babies wander away, we no longer run frantically
up and down the street hunting for them. We ask Carrie to advertise for
a lost child seven hands high, and wearing a four-hour-old face-wash;
and within five minutes she has called up fifteen people in various
parts of the town and has discovered that said child is playing Indian
in some back yard a few blocks away.

Carrie is also our confidante. I hate to think of the number of things
Carrie knows. Prowling into our lines while we are talking, as she does,
in search of connections to take down, she overhears enough gossip to
turn Homeburg into a hotbed of anarchy if she were to loose it. But she
doesn't. Carrie keeps all the secrets that a thousand other women
can't. She knows what Mrs. Wimble Horn said to Mrs. Ackley over the
line which made Mrs. Ackley so mad that the t