Sentence:  When the telephone rang on the day after Hino went down to the village , Rector had a hunch it would be Hino with some morsel of information too important to wait until his return , for there were few telephones in the village and the phone in Rector 's office rarely rang unless it <WSD>was</WSD> important . 
Meaning of the word marked with <WSD> tags:  have the quality of being; (copula, used with an adjective or a predicate noun)