"Rely on me for secrecy and dispatch," said Cyn, going. "If she sees me,
I will mention nuts and raisins; merely mention them, you know."
But Miss Kling, for once, was napping; perhaps dreaming of him Cyn called the Torpedo—Celeste's father—and she obtained the dish, reached her own door again without being seen by any one except the Duchess, and was congratulating herself on her good luck, when suddenly, like an apparition, Quimby stood before her.
Cyn started, murmured something about "oranges," slipped the soap-dish she had also confiscated into her pocket, and tried to make the big fruit-dish appear as small as possible.
She might, however, have spared herself any uneasiness, for this always the most unobservant of mortals, was too much overburdened with some affair of his own, to notice even a two-quart dish.
"Oh! I—I beg pardon, I—I was coming with a a—request to your room," he said eagerly. "I—would it be too much to—to bring a friend, he knows no one here, and I am sure he and you would fraternize at once, if I might bring him, you know."
"Certainly—yes!" replied Cyn, too anxious to get away to pay much attention to his words, particularly as an odor of steak reached her nostrils.
"Thank you! I—I never knew any one who understood me as well as you!" he said with a grateful bow, and without more words, Cyn left him.
"How long you have been gone!" Nattie remarked, looking up, her cheeks very red, and her nose embellished with a streak of smut, as Cyn entered. "Did you see any one?"
"No one except Quimby, who stopped me to ask about bringing a friend to call some evening," Cyn replied, displaying the fruit, and producing the soap-dish.
"Mercy on us!" Nattie said, looking rather aghast, "it is rather large, isn't it? and what did you bring-that soap-dish for?"