isn't often."

"Not-a often? But some-what closely he heed-a you. See zat."

With an open palm he struck the place on the sapling where Gerald had
whittled. The spot was on the outer edge, where Mary could not see it
from her seat. She went around to the front of the primitively
constructed desk, or high counter, to gratify her curiosity. There she
saw that Gerald had carved a hand--her own hand, as she instantly
perceived. The small and shapely member was reproduced in the fresh,
pale wood with rare fidelity. She had unconsciously posed it, while
working the key of the telegraphic instrument under the jack-knife
sculptor's eyes, and there had been ample time for him to whittle a
fac-simile into the birch.

"He is almost as impertinent as you are," she said, and turned to see
how Ravelli took the comment.

But Ravelli had disappeared.

Then, being alone, she laid a hand of her own coquettishly alongside its
wooden counterpart, and critically admired the likeness.

"It was an unwarranted liberty," she said to herself, "but he did it
very well."

The delicate fiber of the wood had favored the carver's purpose. The
imitation hand bore a shade of flattery in the barely tinted birchen
white, and in the fine grained satin smoothness that the keen blade had
wrought, but this was not too much for more than a reasonable
compliment. As to the modeling, that was sincerely accurate, and the
fingers rested on the key precisely as Mary had seen them during many
hours of many days. It is an excessively vain girl who admires herself
as actually as she does a portrait, and the telegrapher really saw more
beauty in the birchen hand than she had ever observed in the live one.
As she contemplated it, Ravelli returned noiselessly behind her.

"I a-wish to say something, Mees Warriner."

The Italian accent of Ravelli grated with unnatural harshness on Mary's
ears, and if he had been an intruder upon her privacy, instead of a man
in a really public place, she would not have been surprised into a deep
flush. She snatched her hand away from its wooden counterpart, and
clasped it with its mate behind her, as she leaned her shoulder against
the carving to hide it.

"If you have a message to send," she said, "I can't get it on the wire
too soon. It's within five minutes of time to shut off."

She started to go behind the desk. He stopped her with a touch upon her
shoulder, and she shrank away reprovingly, although it was solely the
m