"Ethel-Bert!" says I, gaspy. "Say, you know he's no mixed foursome."
"No, no," says she. Ethelbert--one name, after the old Saxon king. Ethelbert Ballard. "Isn't that just perfect? And I am so glad it came to me."
I couldn't agree with her real enthusiastic, so it's lucky she hung up just as she did.
"Huh!" I remarks to Vee. "Why not Maryjim or Daisybill? Say, I think our friend Amelia must have gone off her hinge."
But Vee only yawns and advises me to go to sleep and forget it. Well, I tried. You know how it is, though, when you've been jolted out of the feathers just as you're halfway through the first reel of the slumber stuff. I couldn't get back, to save me.
I counted sheep jumpin' over a wall, I tried lookin' down a railroad track until I could seen the rails meet, and I spelled Constantinople backwards. Nothing doing in the Morpheus act.
I was wider awake then than a new taxi driver makin' his first trip up Broadway. I could think of swell names for seashore cottages, for new surburban additions, and for other people's babies. I invented an explosive pretzel that would win the war. I thought of bills I ought to pay next week sure, and of what I meant to tell the laundryman if he kept on making hash of my pet shirts.
Then I got to wonderin' about this old-maid poetess. Was she through for the night, or did she work double shifts? If she wasn't any nearer sleep than I was she might think up half a dozen substitutes for Ethelbert before mornin'. Would she insist on springin' each one on me as they hit her?
Maybe she was gettin' ready to call me again now. Should I pretend not to hear and let her ring, or would it be better to answer and let on that this was Police Headquarters?
Honest, I got so fidgety waitin' for that buzzer to go off that I could almost hear the night operator pluggin' in on our wire.
And then a thought struck me that wouldn't let go. So, slippin' out easy and throwin' on a bath-robe, I sneaked downstairs to the back hall 'phone, turned on the light, and hunted up Miss Leroy's number in the book.
"Give her a good strong ring, please," says I to Exchange, "and keep it up until you rouse somebody."
"Leave it to me," says the operator. And in a minute or so I gets this throaty "Hello!"