Thus, unable to talk farther at present with her indefatigable conversationalist, Nattie took up a pencil and began entering the day's business in her books, when a shadow darkened the doorway, and she looked up to see Quimby.
Since the evening of the card party, when he had become so fully conscious of the condition of things inside his heart, Quimby had been in a really pitiable state of unrest. Too bashful, or too deficient in self-confidence to seek the society of her who was the cause of all his uneasiness, as his inclinations directed, and not knowing how to make himself as charming to her as she was to him, he wandered past the building containing her, two or three times a day, sometimes receiving the pleasure of a bow as he passed her window, but never before to-day being able to raise the necessary courage to go in and speak.
Nattie, who could not but begin to surmise something of the state of his feelings, but without dreaming of their intensity, now smiled on him, and asked him inside the office. No man or woman can be quite indifferent to one, whom they know has set them on a pedestal, apart from the rest of the world.
"I—really I—I beg pardon, I'm sure," the agitated Quimby, trembling at his own daring, responded to her invitation. "I—I was passing—quite accidentally, you know,—thought I would just step in, you know. Really, I—I must ask pardon for the liberty."
"We are too old acquaintances now for you to consider it a liberty,"
Nattie replied, and the words made his perturbed heart jump with joy.
"Business being quite dull to-day, I shall be glad to be entertained. Of
course," archly, "you came to entertain me?"
Poor Quimby was decidedly taken aback by this question.
"I—I—yes certainly—no—that is—I mean I am afraid I am not much of an entertainer," he stammered, his hands flying to his necktie and nervously untying it as he spoke. Certainly, the wear and tear on his neckties and watch chain while he was in his present condition of love must have been terrific.
"Aren't you?" queried Nattie without gainsaying his assertion.
"No—really you know I—I'm always making mistakes—but I'm used to it, you know—and I am not—possibly I might be a trifle better than nobody—but that's all."
And having given this honest, and certainly not conceited opinion of himself, he entered the office, sat down, and proceeded to make compasses of his legs.