Pip. Ian Hay
and splendid scheme of outdoor relief had just sprung into being, asked, in a tone of suppressed excitement—
"Mr. Pipes, please, does your Terriphone go straight to our house?"
"As straight as straight, me lady," replied Mr. Pipes, who affected an easy jocularity when conversing with Pipette.
"Ooh!" Pipette turned to her brother.
"Pip, amind me to tell you somethin' when we get home."
Pip turned a cold glance upon her.
"You'll tell me all about it on the way there, I expect."
"I won't!" cried Pipette indignantly.
"Oh, yes, you will. Women can't keep nothin' to theirselves."
This pronouncement, delivered in Mr. Evans's most impressive manner, roused Emily and Mr. Pipes to unseemly mirth, and nearly reduced Pipette to tears. Mr. Pipes remarked that Pip was a "caution," while Emily summed him up as a "cure." Shortly after that, Emily and Mr. Pipes having made a now familiar reference to "the same old spot at half-past four on Sunday," the visit terminated with the usual expressions of good-will, and the children were taken home to tea.
Pipette's offended dignity held out till next morning, when, as soon as the banging of the front door announced that Father had gone off in his brougham for his daily round, she proposed a visit to the Consulting Room.
"In the morning? What for?" said Pip.
Pipette was positively heaving with suppressed excitement.
"You go there and wait," she said, "and I'll run down to Cook a minute, and then we'll—no, I won't tell you yet! Go on!"
Fearful of letting her precious secret escape too soon, she gave Pip a push in the direction of the Consulting Room and danced off to the kitchen, leaving that impassive philosopher to ruminate upon the volatile temperament of the female sex. However, he departed as bidden, and amused himself by sitting in the swing-chair, and endeavouring without success, for the hundredth time, to play a tune on a stethoscope.
Presently Pipette returned, carrying two little basins of the soup which usually served to span the yawning gulf between their breakfast and dinner.
Pip took his soup, and began to drink it.
"Stop a minute, Pip!" screamed Pipette.
Pip put down his basin.
"Well, what is it now?" he remarked.
Pipette at last unfolded her plan.
"Pip," she began a little shyly—like all inventors, she dreaded criticism—"you 'member poor Mr. Pipes saying how cold he was?"
"Yes."
"Well, let's send him this nice hot soup, Pip—by Terriphone!"
The last words came with a rush. Then Pipette, heaving such a sigh as Sinbad must have emitted when he had got rid of the Old Man of the Sea, awaited her brother's reply.
Pip smiled indulgently.
"Silly kid!" he remarked.
Pipette had expected this.
"Yes," she said; "but, Pip, wouldn't it be loverly to do it?"
Pip's practical mind began to evolve difficulties.
"How are you goin' to do it?"
Pipette projected upon him a glance in which artless surprise, deferential admiration, and simple faith were exquisitely mingled—a glance which, in after years, her husband once ruefully described as "good for a ten-pound note at any hour of the day,"—and replied simply—
"I thought you would manage all that, Pip. You're so bewwy clever!"
"All right," said Pip. "Let's do it."
Thus it is that women make fools of the strongest men.
They carried their soup carefully over to the little table beside the telephone.
"I say," said Pip suddenly, "is he to have both basins?"
Pipette's bounteous nature would gladly have sacrificed both Pip's lunch and her own, but she thought it wiser to concede this point.
"No; one will do, I fink," she replied.
"All right. You can drink half mine," said Pip.
They gravely drank Pip's soup, turn about, and then applied themselves to the matter in hand.
First, they lifted the receiver of the telephone from its rest and surveyed it doubtfully. There was a cup-shaped receptacle at one end into which soup could easily be poured, but the "tube" which connected it to the instrument was of very meagre dimensions.
"Are you sure there's a pipe all the way?" inquired Pip doubtfully.
"Certain. It's just the same as the Talking-Hole, only thinner. And the Talking-Hole has got a pipe all the way, 'cause don't you remember you put a glass marble in one day when I told you not to, and it fell out in the hall?"
Pip's doubts were not quite satisfied even with this brilliant parallel.
"It'll take a long time to get through," he said. He was fingering the silk-coated wire. "This pipe's awful thin. A marble would never get down it."
"No, but the soup will twickle down all right," said Pipette, whose mind, busy with works of mercy, soared far above these utilitarian details. (In later years she was a confirmed bazaar organiser.)
"We'll ring and tell him first, shall we?" suggested Pip.
"Yes, let's!" murmured Pipette joyfully.
She turned the call-handle, and Pip held the receiver, just as he had seen Mr. Evans do. After a decent interval he remarked into the cup—
"Are you there, Mr. Pipes? This is us."
This highly illuminating statement met with no response.
"I suppose he can hear you," said Pipette anxiously.
"Oh, yes. I'm talkin' just as loud as Mr. Evans does."
"I suppose you'll be able to hear him, then?"
"I expect so. But it's a long way. Ring again."
This time, in turning the call-handle, Pipette accidentally placed her hand on the receiver-hook, with the result that she actually rang up the Exchange Office.
Presently a voice inquired brusquely of Pip what he wanted. His reply was a delighted yell, and an announcement to Mr. Pipes that he had something for him. Further revelations were frustrated by Pipette, who tore the receiver from his grasp, and, holding her hand over the opening to prevent eavesdropping on the part of the bénéficiaire, whispered excitedly in his ear—
"Don't tell him any more! We'll just pour it in now, and give him such a surprise!"
Consequently the young lady in the Exchange Office was soon compelled to relinquish her languid efforts to find out what No. 015273 really wanted, and incontinently switched him off, recking little of the way in which two small philanthropists at the other end of the wire were treating the property of the National Telephone Company.
Very carefully Pip poured the soup into the cup-shaped receiver of the telephone, which Pipette held as steadily as her excitement would permit.
From the first it became obvious that soup-delivery by telephone was going to be a slow business, for the cup transmitted the generous fluid most reluctantly.
"It's such a very thin pipe," they explained to each other hopefully.
At length Pip remarked—
"I should think some of it had got there by now."
"Not bewwy much, I don't fink," said Pipette; "this handle thing's still pretty full."