"Let us," I said hoarsely--"let us go and look at our child; she is all we
have left now."
Moodily we turned to go upstairs. In the hall we stopped dead. Upon the
floor was the wretched paper which my Victorian conscience and my
twentieth-century caution had prevented me from signing.
"He must," said my wife with her usual perspicacity, "have dropped it on
his way out. Let's see who the box was really meant for."
Picking it up I read aloud in cold firm tones _my own name and address_.
The box had been meant for us after all.
* * * * *
We got it in the end. It came one morning, like the flowers in Spring,
quite suddenly, and we spent a whole day telephoning to our friends to tell
them we had a coin-box at last. I also wrote a letter full of gratitude to
the telephone people and got the reply that, "owing to the shortage of
plant, etc.," they regretted that for the time being they could not grant
my request for a telephone.
We did not tell them that we had had one for three months; Heaven knows
what would have happened.
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