Quimby gave a bounce, and then grew limp in all his joints.
“Is it possible? Personally?” questioned Cyn, with great interest and animation; then glancing at Nattie’s face, her tone changed as she added, “He was not what you thought! I understand, poor Nat!”
Quimby straightened himself up. He fancied he saw a gleam of hope ahead.
“Far enough from what I thought!” replied Nattie, with a mixture of pathos and disgust. “Why did he not remain invisible?” then, in a burst of disappointment—“Cyn, he is simply awful! All red hair and grease, musk, cheap jewelry, and insolent assurance!”
Quimby glanced in the opposite glass, and his face brightened all over. He felt like a new man!
“Oh, dear! Is it as bad as that?” said Cyn, looking dismayed. “He was so entertaining on the wire, I can hardly believe it. Are you quite sure it was C?”
“I could not realize it myself, but it is a fact nevertheless,” Nattie answered sorrowfully, and then related what she termed the “disgusting details.” Cyn listened, vexed and sorry, for she too had become interested in the invisible C, but Quimby found it impossible to restrain his joy at this complete overthrow of one whom he had ever considered a formidable rival.
“It is no use to talk about romance in real life!” said the annoyed Cyn, yielding to the conviction that the obnoxious visitor really was C, as Nattie concluded. “It is nice to read about and to enact on the stage, but it’s altogether too unreliable for our solid, everyday world. Well, dear!” consolingly, “it’s better to know the truth than to have gone on blindly talking to so undesirable an acquaintance!”
“Where ignorance is bliss, ’tis folly to be wise,” quoted Nattie, with a shrug of her shoulders. “But—yes—I suppose I—ought to be glad I know the worst.”
“I—I beg pardon, but I—I think I hinted it might be as it has proved, you know!” said Quimby, trying not to look triumphant, and failing signally.
Not particularly pleased at having his superior discernment thus pointed out, Nattie replied rather shortly,
“It was luck and chance anyway, and it was my luck to stumble on the most disagreeable specimen in the business. That is all.”
“Do you suppose he is aware of the impression he produced on you?” asked Cyn.
“No, indeed!” Nattie replied scornfully. “Is there anything so blind as vulgar, ignorant, self-conceit? I have no doubt he thinks I was charmed!”
“Then how will you manage when he wants to talk on the wire again?” asked Cyn.
“I shall have to make excuses until he takes the hint. Oh, dear!” said Nattie with a sigh, “I believe it is impossible to get any comfort out of this world!”
“Oh, no, it isn’t!” said Cyn in her bright cheery manner. “The way to do is not to allow ourselves to fret over what we cannot help. I am almost as disappointed as you, dear, over this total collapse of what opened so interestingly; but the curtain has fallen on the ignominious last act of our little drama, so farewell—a long farewell to our wired romance!”
As Cyn spoke, the somewhat unmusical voice of Jo Norton was heard in the hall, singing an air from a popular burlesque, followed by the appearance among them of Jo himself. Of course the whole story had to be related for his benefit, and very little sympathy did Nattie receive from him.
“Let this teach you a lesson, young lady!” he said, with mock solemnity, “namely, Attend to your business and let romance alone!”
“As you do!” said Cyn.
“As I do,” he echoed, “and consequently be happy as I am! I tell you, romance and sentiment and love, and all that bosh, are at the bottom of two-thirds of all the misery in the world!”
Notwithstanding which sage remark, and the fact of the curtain having fallen on the end, as Cyn said, for a moment yesterday was as if it had never been, when Nattie entered her office the next morning and was greeted with the familiar,
“B m—B m—B m—where is my little girl at B m, to say good morning to me?” and she made an involuntary movement towards the key to respond in the usual way.
The remembrance of the actual state of things checked her just in time, and then, with a rather uncertain and tremulous touch of the key she answered,
“Good morning! wait—am busy!”
“One untruth!” she thought to herself, as C became mute, “not the only one I shall have to tell, I fear, before I succeed in conveying my exact meaning to the understanding of—the person. I will pick a quarrel, if possible, and he persists in talking! Oh, dear! I could have endured the red hair, even those dreadful teeth, had it not been for the bear’s-grease and general vulgarity of the creature. Well, it’s all over now!” and she sighed, from which it may be inferred that Jo’s admonitions had not been of much consolation to her.
We do not take the lessons our experience teaches us, to heart immediately; first, their bitterness must be overcome.
To Nattie’s great relief, the wire happened to be very busy that morning, but whenever it was possible C called her, and called in vain.
Immediately after her return from dinner, however, having just received and signed for a message, C, the moment she closed her key, said,
“Where have you been today? are you not glad to have me back again? it cannot be I am so soon forgotten?”
Unable to avoid answering, Nattie responded on the wrong side of truth again. “Have been busy; wait, please, a customer here.”
“I cannot help saying, confound the luck!” C responded, savagely. To which anathema Nattie turned up her nose scornfully, and made no reply.
The nervous dread of his “calling,” that was upon her all day, caused her to make more blunders than she had ever done in all her telegraphic career. She gave wrong change continually, numbered her messages incorrectly, and “broke” so much that the operator who sent
