“It is not necessary to write!” she cried. “Pray, do not take such a trifle so much to heart. Remember I am yours, and—”
Another voice from the stairs just above the pair, interrupted her. It was the voice of Fishblate père, and it said,
“Hugging! Marry her!”
“I—I—will!” wailed the now alarmed Quimby, as Celeste blushingly withdrew from her embrace of him. “I—I will see you tomorrow if I—if I live!” and striking his forehead with his hand, he burst away, bounded frantically down the stairs and fled, ejaculating,
“I knew it! I had a presentiment from my youth!”
“Excuse his eccentricity, Pa!” Celeste said. “He loves me so much, poor fellow!”
“Humph! Get enough of that!” he growled, with contempt.
“And he has a nice little property!” added Celeste, as they went upstairs.
“Property is the thing!” Fishblate père said, with undisguised plainness.
Nattie emerged from her retreat on the hasty exit of Quimby and Celeste, so full of regret for the flight that had proved so disastrous to him, that the ludicrous part of the scene just enacted was forgotten.
“Poor Quimby!” she thought, remorsefully. “What a dreadful fix he is in! I hope he will get out of it; and I am so sorry for my share in it! How strange it would be if he should, as he once said, marry the wrong woman, after all!”
XIV
Quimby Accepts the Situation
When Quimby rushed out into the street, it was with some wild and indefinite intention of flying to the ends of the earth, but recalled to his senses by the stares of the passersby, he concluded he had better first return and get his hat. When he reached his own room, where Clem was thoughtfully pacing the floor, he flung himself face downwards upon the bed, groaning and kicking his feet spasmodically.
“What is the matter?” Clem inquired.
“I’ve done it now! I’ve done it now!” was all the answer Quimby gave him.
“Has she rejected you?” asked Clem, his mind going back to their morning’s conversation.
“No! no! she has accepted me!” wailed Quimby, with a prodigious kick.
“What!” shouted Clem, stopping short in his promenade.
“She has! Oh, she has!” moaned the wretched victim of mistakes. “I am engaged! Oh, heavens! engaged!”
“Do you mean to tell me that Miss Rogers has accepted you?” inquired Clem harshly.
This name completely unmanned poor Quimby, and he began to cry like a schoolboy.
“Miss Rogers!—No! never—never! but she—Celeste!”
“Celeste!” echoed Clem; “Celeste!”
“Yes! I—oh!—I made a mistake, you know!” explained Quimby, wiping his eyes on the bedspread.
An irresistible smile, but quickly suppressed, curved Clem’s lips as he asked,
“But how could you possibly make such a mistake as that? Come, cheer up, my boy, tell me, and let me help you out!”
Quimby looked at him mournfully.
“It—it was dark,” he answered dejectedly, “she sat in the chair—the lost Nattie I mean, it was she, for she spoke to me! Why did I not seize the chance then? But no! I left her to—to rehearse a little first, and when I returned—Oh!—it was still dark, and I did not know a transformation had been effected—I burst forth in eloquence, and—oh!—it was Celeste, you know! I fled—she followed—caught and hugged me in the hall! Her father saw—roared ‘Marry her’ and I—there was no escape, you know!”
“But, my dear fellow,” remonstrated Clem, “you can explain the mistake! you are not obliged to marry Celeste because you accidentally proposed to her!”
Quimby shook his head hopelessly.
“She—she—would sue me for breach of promise you know, and take all—all my little property! And her terrific father—I don’t know what he would not do to me! Only one thing could make me brave all!—If Miss Rogers—Nattie, would say it might have been, had not this fearful mistake occurred, I would face even old Fishblate and break all bonds.”
“Dear old fellow, I am afraid she—Nattie would have rejected you, in any case. She is—a flirt!” said Clem, somewhat savagely. “She leads people on, for the sake of dropping them, when it suits her convenience!”
“I—now really, I—I cannot think that; even though she had rejected me, I could not think that!” said Quimby, loyally; then with sudden decision, “I will settle it now! If I had not put it off before, as I did, I might not have blundered into this awful fix, you know! I hear them in Cyn’s room now; Cyn and Nattie; come with me! I—I will have witnesses, and no mistakes this time, you know!”
“What are you going to do?” asked Clem, following his excited friend, rather reluctantly.
“I am going to find out if she—Nattie—likes me, you know! if she does, I will brave Celeste—her fierce father—the law! if not—why then, I must be a martyr anyway, you know, and I don’t care how big a one I am!”
So saying, Quimby went across to Cyn’s room, Clem, not exactly liking the position thrust upon him, but unwilling to refuse, accompanying him.
Meanwhile, Nattie had pounced upon Cyn, the moment she returned, exclaiming,
“Oh! Cyn! such a dreadful thing has happened!”
“What? how? when?” asked Cyn, while, from the effects of the melodrama she had just been witnessing, visions of Clem, with a dozen bullets in his head, danced before her eyes.
“Quimby! poor Quimby! I have ruined him!” was Nattie’s remorseful and unintelligible answer.
“Well, my dear, if you could possibly be a trifle lucid, perhaps I could understand the plot of the piece,” said Cyn, decidedly relieved of her first surmise.
Upon which Nattie, half laughing and half crying, explained. But the ludicrous side was too much for Cyn, and she could only laugh.
“What a farce it would make!” she said, as soon as she could speak.
“Oh, Cyn!” Nattie said, reproachfully. “Think how dreadful it is for Quimby, and for me, the un-meaning instrument of it all!”
“Nonsense, my dear,”
