18 delayed fifty minutes, account not being able to raise the
operator at Bentonville in that time; as an explanation, operator says
she was over at the hotel getting her lunch."
Evidently Miss Ross had little ingenuity in the line of excuses or she
would never have offered such a threadbare one as that. I wanted the
chance to annihilate her and here it was. I called up Bentonville and
asked if Miss Ross was there. She was, and I said, "Isn't it possible
for you to invent a better excuse than 'lunch' for your failure to
answer last night, or this morning rather?"
She drummed on the key for a moment and then said if I didn't like that
excuse I knew what I could do. I caught my breath at her audacity and
then "_did_." I sent her time to her on No. 21, and a man to take her
place. I then dismissed the matter from my mind and supposed that I had
heard the last of Miss Ross. I never was very well acquainted with the
female sex or I would not have dismissed the matter with such
complacency.
A day or two after this I was sitting in the division superintendent's
office, he being out on the road, and I heard a voice say:
"Is this Mr.
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