CHAPTER I.
The hands of the clock were climbing around toward eleven and the doctorhad not returned. Mary, a drowsiness beginning to steal over her, lookedup with a yawn. Then she fell into a soliloquy:
To bed, or not to bed--that is the question: Whether 'tis wiser in the wife to wait for a belated spouse, Or to wrap the drapery of her couch about her And lie down to pleasant dreams? To dream! perchance to sleep! And by that sleep to end the headache And the thousand other ills that flesh is heir to, The restoration of a wilted frame,-- Wilted by loss of sleep on previous nights-- A consummation devoutly to be wished. To dream! perchance to sleep!--aye, there's the rub; For in that somnolence what peals may come Must give her pause. There is the telephone That makes calamity of her repose. Her spouse may not have come to answer it, Which means that she, his wife, must issue forth All dazed and breathless from delicious sleep, And knock her knees on intervening chairs, And bump her head on a half open door, And get there finally all out of breath, And take the receiver down and say: "Hello?" The old, old question: "Is the doctor there?" Comes clearly now to her awakened ear. Then, tentatively, she must make reply: "The doctor was called out an hour ago, But I expect him now at any time." Good patrons should be held and not escape To other doctors that may lie in wait; For in this voice so brusque and straight and clear She recognizes an old friend and true, Whose purse is ever ready to make good, And she hath need of many, many things. But then, again, the message of the 'phone May be that of some stricken little child Whose mother's voice trembles with love and fear. Then must the listener earnestly advise: "Don't wait for him! Get someone else to-night." Perchance again the message may be that Of colics dire and death so imminent That she who listens, tho' with 'customed ear, Shrinks back dismayed and knows not what to say, Lacking the knowledge and profanity Of him who, were he there, would settle quick This much ado about much nothingness. And so these anticipatory peals Reverberate through fancy as she sits, And make her rather choose to bear the ills She has than fly to others she may meet; To wait a little longer for her spouse, That, when at last she does retire to rest, She may be somewhat surer of her sleep. And so she sits there waiting for the step And the accompanying clearing of the throat Which she would know were she in Zanzibar. And by-and-by he comes and fate is kind And lets them slumber till the early dawn.