ght calls. It might be anything,
a telegram at the station, Willie's boy run over by an automobile,
Gertrude's children ill. A dozen possibilities ran through my mind.

And Maggie would not let me out!

"You're not going downstairs," she called, from a safe distance.

"Maggie!" I cried, sharply. And banged at the door. The telephone was
ringing steadily. "Come here at once."

"Miss Agnes," she beseeched, "you go to bed and don't listen. There'll
be nothing there, for all your trouble," she said, in a quavering voice.
"It's nothing human that rings that bell."

Finally, however, she freed me, and I went down the stairs. I had
carried down a lamp, and my nerves were vibrating to the rhythm of the
bell's shrill summons. But, strangely enough, the fear had left me.
I find, as always, that it is difficult to put into words. I did not
relish the excursion to the lower floor. I resented the jarring sound of
the bell. But the terror was gone.

I went back to the telephone. Something that was living and moving was
there. I saw its eyes, lower than mine, reflecting the lamp like twin
lights. I was frightened, but still it was not the fear. The twin lights
leaped forward--and proved to be the eyes of Miss Emily's cat, which had
been sleeping on the stand!

I answered the telephone. To my surprise it was Miss Emily herself, a
quiet and very dignified voice which apologized for disturbing me at
that hour, and went on:

"I feel that I was very abrupt this afternoon, Miss Blakiston. My excuse
is that I have always feared change. I have lived in a rut too long, I'm
afraid. But of course, if you feel you would like to move the telephone,
or put in an upstairs instrument, you may do as you like."

She seemed, having got me there, unwilling to ring off. I got a curious
effect of reluctance over the telephone, and there was one phrase that
she repeated several times.

"I do not want to influence you. I want you to do just what you think
best."

The fear was entirely gone by the time she rang off. I felt, instead, a
sort of relaxation that was most comforting. The rear hall, a cul-de-sac
of nervousness in the daytime and of horror at night, was suddenly
transformed by the light of my lamp into a warm and cheerful refuge from
the darkness of the lower floor. The purring of the cat, comfortably
settled on the telephone-stand, was as cheering as the singing of a
kettle on a stove. On the rack near me my garden hat and an old Paisl