There was a sneering emphasis in Miss Kling’s last words, that made them anything but complimentary, as Nattie felt; but saying only, in a voice she vainly tried to steady,
“You may be right,” she went into her own room, and locked the door behind her.
She knew now! knew what that first romantic acquaintance, that dejection at the companionship lost in the obnoxious redhead, that joy when C was restored to her in Clem, that unsatisfied desire to have him back on the wire, all to herself; that suppressed jealousy of Cyn, led to—and what it all meant; that she loved him! and he, did he, as they said, love Cyn? alas! who could help loving bright, beautiful Cyn? To attract him to herself was only the romance of their first acquaintance—and even this Cyn slightly shared; it was not Cyn’s fault. Nattie could not be guilty of the petty meanness of disliking her friend because she possessed attractions superior to her own. But if he loved Cyn, then, indeed, had the curtain fallen on the sad ending of her romance; the lights were out, and all was darkness. If he loved Cyn? Nattie, with the first full knowledge of her own feelings, could hardly hope otherwise, remembering their intimacy, his marked attention to her, his praise of her, and her winning beauty and talents. Yes, it must be that he loved her! Oh, why must Cyn be given everything, and she—nothing? What kind of fate was it that marked out the broad, sunny road for one, and the somber, uneven pathway for another? Must her life be one of lonely discontent, a telegraph office at the beginning, and a telegraph office at the end? was this to be all?
“No!” thought Nattie, raising her head proudly, and looking at the red and swollen eyes that gazed at her from the opposite glass. “Life shall give me something of its best; if not of love, then of fame! and I will work and persevere until I gain it!”
Yet, for all of her resolution, Nattie sobbed herself to sleep. Not so easy is it to renounce love, and look forward to a life barren of its best and sweetest gift.
And after this there was a change in her observable even to the undiscerning Quimby. Shadows had fallen over her face, lurked in her gray eyes and around the corners of her mouth. The old restlessness had given place to a settled gloom. She was less often seen among the gay circle that gathered in Cyn’s parlor, pleading every possible excuse for staying away, and when with them, to his surprise and delight, and to Celeste’s dismay, she devoted herself to Quimby, to Jo—to anyone rather than to Clem. For most of all had she changed to him. Afraid of betraying her secret, and unable to control the pain that overpowered her when in his presence, now she knew her own heart, she avoided him in every practicable way, and seldom, even over their wire, talked with him. She was always “tired,” or “busy,” when he called her now.
Clem, surprised and puzzled by this unaccountable change, at first endeavored to overcome her coolness, but ended by becoming cool in his turn, and talked and joked with Cyn more than ever. And if a touch of the shadows on Nattie’s face sometimes crept over his own, she, in her self-engrossment, did not observe it.
If Quimby’s hopes burned brighter at this state of affairs, and he was consequently happier, Jo, for some reason unexplained, was not. In fact, he was decidedly queer; now gay, now horribly cynical, not to say morose.
Truly, Cupid, viewed in the character of a telegraphist, was far from being a success; for he had switched everybody off on to the wrong wire!
Cyn, gay unconscious Cyn, no more dreamed of Clem being supposedly in love with her, than she did that Jo was so filled with thoughts of her, that, had he been a different kind of a man, one would have called him desperately in love. But Cyn, unconscious of all this, saw, and with sorrow, the ever-increasing coldness between Nattie and Clem. For she had quite set her heart on the romance that had commenced in dots and dashes culminating in orange blossoms—a Wired Love. But now, to her vexation, she saw her anticipations liable to be set at naught, and herself unable to obtain even a clue to the trouble. Like the “line man,” who goes up and down to find why the wires will not work, she could not find the “break” anywhere, and decided that romances, whether “wired” or taken in the ordinary way, were certainly very unwieldy things to manage.
“It seems to me that you do not use that wire very often now,” she said one evening to Clem and Nattie, the latter of whom she had forcibly dragged forth from the solitude of her room. “Were it not for me, it would rust. Why! I used to hear your clatter into the small hours, but now—”
“Now we are more sensible,” concluded Nattie, leaning over the piano to look at some music. “One gets tired of talking in dots and dashes after a time!”
Poor Nattie’s trouble made her bitter sometimes.
“Yes, one wants a person they don’t know to talk with, in order to make it interesting!” added Clem, not to be outdone.
“Good gracious!” thought Cyn, dismayed at the result of her probing. “This is really dreadful!” then she exclaimed impulsively,
“I hope you have not quarreled, you two!”
“Oh! dear no!” replied Nattie quickly, “what should we quarrel about?”
But Clem, after looking at her a moment, advanced and held out his hand, saying frankly,
“I believe we have been cross to each other of late, although how it happened I do not know! So let us make up and be good!”
Cyn looked up hopefully at this, but Nattie, who could hardly conceal her agitation, replied coldly,
“I do
