“I thought,” Nattie replied, raising her gray eyes, from which the shadows were all gone now, to his, “that you loved Cyn.”
“You did!” he said, surprised and reproachful; “and that is why you have been so cold and distant! How could you?”
“But Cyn is so handsome, and—I do not see how you could help it!” pleaded Nattie in self-extenuation.
“Of course she is handsome, talented, brilliant fascinating, everything that is nice,” Clem answered, “but,” in a low voice, “Cyn was not my little girl at B m!”
Of course, after this there was another inevitable consequence, and then Clem asked,
“And did you care because you imagined—you naughty, jealous girl—that I loved Cyn?”
“Yes,” Nattie answered, blushing, but honestly, “I was very unhappy, indeed I was, Clem! I think I loved you from the first—when you were invisible, you know!”
“And I,” said Clem, “should have given myself up a victim to despair, like Quimby, if it had not been for one thing. Jo made me a duplicate of that picture you destroyed, and the fact that you never even mentioned the Cupid overhead gave me hope!” and his own roguish look was in his eyes as he saw Nattie’s confusion, and laughing his merry laugh, he clasped her in his arms.
“I beg pardon,” said Cyn tapping, and entering after a cautious interval, “But I come to inquire if Nat—I mean Nathalie—still thinks, as she did an hour ago, that Clem and I are just suited to each other?”
Nattie laughed and blushed.
“You see I set my heart on this from the beginning,” said Cyn to Clem, not thinking it necessary to define to what “this” referred. “It was such a perfect romance, you know! and she has been frightening me by declaring that you were in love with me, and was so positive that she almost made me believe it, notwithstanding my natural sagacity!”
“As I certainly should have been,” replied Clem gallantly, “only for a prior attachment. You see, I loved Nattie before ever I saw you! Why, I used to pass the most of my time when at X n in wondering what she was like, and wishing—I was as near her as I am now, for instance. And how miserable I was, when she dropped me so suddenly! and how happy I was when I came upon her at that blessed feast, and the red hair was all explained away. And then came another cross on the circuit of my true love.”
“And had it not been for that dear Betsey Kling with her invectives we should have been mixed, and not had a cue now!” exclaimed Cyn. “I declare, I could hug her!”
But Betsey Kling not being available just then, she substituted Nattie, and gave her a most emphatic squeeze.
“It was your shot about the Torpedo that finished her, Cyn,” laughed Clem.
“It was effective, I flatter myself,” Cyn confessed. “And that reminds me, you must not stay here now, Nat, you know; so I have seen Mrs. Simonson, and you are going to live with me—for the present”—glancing archly at her, “until that book is written, for instance.”
“And it will be written, now, I know!” said Nattie, earnestly, her eyes shining. “You remember what you once said, Cyn? I see now you were right.”
“Yes;” said Cyn, seriously, “and thank Heaven that it was love, and not disappointment, that came!”
“Love shall not come in vain!” Nattie said, as seriously. “I will be worthy of it!”
The after years only could prove her words. But in Clem’s face the belief in them was written as plainly as if those future possibilities were acknowledged results.
“We must have another feast to celebrate events!” Cyn said then, gayly. “You are happy; my romance is OK; Celeste is ecstatic; Quimby as joyful as circumstances permit the victim of mistake to be; Jo and I are hopeful of future fame—and we certainly must have a feast!”
“With plenty of dishes this time,” laughed Clem, “and there shall be no more crosses on the wire!”
“But bless my heart!” ejaculated Cyn, “here you two are making love like ordinary mortals”—at this Nattie hastily withdrew the hand Clem had taken—“Quimby and Celeste, for instance! This will never do! We must end this romance of dots and dashes as it commenced, to make it truly ‘Wired Love!’ ”
“True enough! so we must!” answered Clem merrily, and rising, he went to the “key,” with his eyes looking straight into Nattie’s, and wrote something that made her blush and seize his hand in shy and unnecessary alarm, saying,
“Suppose Jo should be over in your room! He might be able to read it!”
“Very well,” replied Clem, as he laughed and kissed her, regardless of the spectator. “I am quite content to make love like common mortals, Cyn, and I hope, my darling Nattie, that we are done now with all ‘breaks’ and ‘crosses,’ as we are with Wired Love. Henceforth ours shall be the pure, unalloyed article, genuine love!”
And Nattie, half-laughing, half-serious, but wholly glad, took the key and wrote, “O. K.”
If anyone is anxious to know what Clem wrote when Nattie stopped him, here it is.
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Endnotes
Colophon
Wired Love
was published in 1880 by
Ella Cheever Thayer.
This ebook was produced for
Standard Ebooks
by
Emma Sweeney,
and is based on a transcription produced in 2008 by
Andrew Katz and The Online Distributed Proofreading Team
for
Project Gutenberg
and on digital scans available at the
HathiTrust Digital Library
and Google Books.
The cover page is adapted from
Dance in the Country,
a painting completed in 1883 by
Pierre-Auguste Renoir.
The cover and title pages feature the
League Spartan and
