‘It was a man’s voice? Do you know to whom he was speaking?’
‘Oh, it was to Mr. Field.’
‘I suppose you do not remember what they were talking about?’
‘Of course I remember—as far as it went.’
‘How do you mean, Miss Bell?’
It enchanted Maggie to be called Miss Bell. When you never go out and you live in a village where everyone has known you since you were a baby, it isn’t a thing that very often happens to you. She became as anxious to speak as Miss Silver was to hear. Someone who really listened, someone who called her Miss Bell. A flow of words set in.
‘Well, you see, it was like this. There I was in my bed, and not so bad as long as I didn’t try and move, and there was the phone and I couldn’t reach it without I did move. So first I thought I wouldn’t, and then I thought I would,
