azed silence, looking sheepishly at each
other, went meekly on their way, and one home, at least, boasted no
telephone. Indeed, to establish that exchange which was Joyce's dream,
seemed for a time a ridiculous failure. The attempt to make these people
understand that only good was intended them seemed positively useless.
When it was again and again reiterated, by means of printed dodgers shed
broadcast among the homes, by Dalton's talks to the boys in the factory
at the closing hour, even by Marie Sauzey's urgings over the wire from
the central office, that every stringent need, or helpful offer, was to
be communicated to her by telephone, they simply winked at each other,
and, hanging up the receiver, whispered to any who happened to be
present,

"Didn't I tell you, now? It's spies they are, and nothin' else. Sorra a
word do they get out o' me this day!"

But one morning, poor old Mother Flaherty suffered a sad accident when
quite alone in her cottage. Trying to balance herself on an uncertain
chair, in her effort to reach a bottle of medicine on the top shelf of
her cupboard, her rickety support gave way and let her down with cruel
celerity. Her poor old bones were brittle and snapped with the
concussion. When she tried to raise herself, after her momentary groans
and exclamations, she found it impossible, for the left femur was
broken. She wavered for a time between spells of semi-consciousness, and
rousings to fresh shrieks and wails, the pain growing momently more
agonizing and the floor more intolerable in its cold and hardness. But
the shouts of some children out at play drowned her feeble old voice in
happier sounds, and no one heard. She had given herself up to a lonely,
horrible death when her wild, roving gaze fell upon the telephone not
three feet away, and she remembered the oft-repeated injunction to tell
her wants into its non-committal ear. She had no faith in the thing, and
was half-afraid of it, believing it a temptation of Satan, but the
situation had become unbearable. Flesh weakened and spirit failed. She
would try it as a last resort, then cross herself and die. Dragging
herself painfully with groans and sobs, she managed to reach up with a
broomstick and jog a faint ring out of the gong, at the same time
shouting at it in a fury of horror and anxiety,

"Help! Help! Help! I'm kilt intirely. I want a do-octhor!"

The confused sounds that reached Marie were vibrating with trouble and
despair, bu