and the place where he jots numbers down in pencil and I rub
them off with bread crumbs. I could see Andrew coming out of
the sitting-room to answer the bell. And then the operator said
carelessly, "Doesn't answer." My forehead was wet as I came out
of the booth.

I hope I may never have to re-live the horrors of the next hour.
In spite of my bluff and hearty ways, in times of trouble I am as
reticent as a clam. I was determined to hide my agony and anxiety
from the well-meaning people of the Moose Hotel. I hurried to the
railway station to send a telegram to the Professor's address in
Brooklyn, but found the place closed. A boy told me it would not be
open until the afternoon. From a drugstore I called "information" in
Willdon, and finally got connected with some undertaker to whom the
Willdon operator referred me. A horrible, condoling voice (have you
ever talked to an undertaker over the telephone?) answered me that
no one by the name of Mifflin had been among the dead, but admitted
that there was one body still unidentified. He used one ghastly word
that made me shudder--unrecognizable. I rang off.

I knew then for the first time the horror of loneliness. I thought
of the poor little man's notebook that I had seen. I thought of his
fearless and lovable ways--of his pathetic little tweed cap, of the
missing button of his jacket, of the bungling darns on his frayed
sleeve. It seemed to me that heaven could mean nothing more than to
roll creaking along country roads, in Parnassus, with the Professor
beside me on the seat. What if I had known him only--how long was
it? He had brought the splendour of an ideal into my humdrum life.
And now--had I lost it forever? Andrew and the farm seemed faint and
far away. I was a homely old woman, mortally lonely and helpless.