Part 2 (1/2)

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 gla.s.s 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 _beneficiaire_, 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.”