I have had a telegram from my mother, or one sent in her name.
She has been taken ill suddenly." "That is bad news," was the sympathetic answer.

"If the message has not come direct from Mrs.Forbes may it not be rather exaggerated in tone?
Some people can never write telegrams.

The knowledge that each word costs a halfpenny weighs on them like a nightmare." As he hoped and anticipated, she produced the message itself from her handbag.
"This is what it says," she said, and read: "'Mrs.Forbes ill and unable communicate by telephone.

Come at once.

Manager Royal Devonshire Hotel.'" Then she added, with a suspicious break in her voice: "That sounds serious enough, in all conscience." "Is it addressed to you personally ?" said Theydon, racking his wits for some means of lessening the girl's foreboding without tickling the ears of the other people in the compartment by suggesting that she might have been brought from her home by some cruel ruse of her father's enemies.
"Yes." "But isn't that somewhat singular in itself?
One would imagine that such a significant message would have been sent to your father." "Why ?" "Well, men are better fitted to withstand these shocks, for one thing.
It was heartless, or, to say the least, thoughtless, to give you such news with the brutal frankness of a telegram." "I cannot understand it at all.