"Do you not think Cyn a very charming young lady?"
"Oh, yes! I—I—yes, very charming!" Quimby answered, but not so enthusiastically as perhaps Mr. Norton might have done. For Quimby's heart was of the old-fashioned kind, and his fancy was not fickle; besides, being now, in a measure, launched upon the subject, of love, so awful to approach, he was unwilling thus soon to leave a theme so sweet, yet so formidable. Therefore, crossing his legs, and bracing up against the chair-back; he determined, now or never, to give her an inkling of his feelings, an intention so very palpable, that Nattie was glad indeed to hear from the sounder,
"B m—B m—B m—."
"Excuse me," she said, hastily. "They are calling me on the wire," and immediately answered, and began taking a message.
Meanwhile, to him had come a reaction, and he was in a state of total collapse. Before she had finished receiving that message of only ten words, he had drawn himself dejectedly to his feet, and was looking for his hat.
"I—I really—I must go, you know!" he faltered, blushing, as Nattie glanced up at him. "I—I fear I have intruded now—but I—I—" he stopped short, unable to find an ending to his sentence.
"I'm always glad of company," Nattie said, but a little distantly, as she gave "O. K." on the wire.
"I—I—really, you are very kind, you know," stammered Quimby. "I—I pass here on the way to dinner, you see—from the office, you know,"—he eked out his meagre income by writing in a lawyer's office—"where, 'pon my word, I ought to have been now. But it's—it's such a pleasure to see you—you know that—where can my hat be?"
All this time he had been looking around for his hat, and now Nattie fished it out of the waste basket, into which he had unwittingly dropped it. Taking it with many apologies, he bowed himself confusedly and ungracefully out, and went away, wondering if he would ever be able to get himself up to such a pitch again, and resolving, if it proved possible, that it should not occur next time where there was one of those aggravating "sounders."
"Now, I hope," thought Nattie, as she watched his retreating form, "that he is not going to make an idiot of himself! Not only because he is as good a fellow as he is a blundering one, and I wouldn't for the world hurt his feelings, but also because it would be dreadfully uncomfortable to have a rejected lover wandering around in the same house with one!"