"That young lady over there acts very strangely. She is not crazy, is she?" inquired a gentleman who stood leaning against the counter over the way, and looking across at Nattie.
"I don't know what to make of her," the previously mentioned clerk, to whom this question was addressed, answered, "I have been observing her for some weeks; she sits half the time as you see her now, laughing to herself and gesticulating. Sometimes she will lean back in her chair and absolutely shake with laughter, and she smiles at vacancy continually. She seems all right enough with the ex-ception of these vagaries. But she is a perfect conundrum to me."
"A bit luny, I think," said the gentleman, who had asked the question.
Just then, Nattie, who, of course, was talking to "C," and telling him about that sketch—with the slight reservation of the Cupid,—happened to look up, with her gaze seventy miles away; but becoming aware of the curious stares of the two gentlemen opposite, her vision shortened itself to near objects, and rightly surmising from their looks the tenor of their thoughts, she colored, and straightway turned her back, at the same time informing "C" of what she termed their impertinence. But "C" answered, with a laugh,
"It cannot but look strange, you know, to outsiders, to see a person making such an ado apparently over nothing. Put yourself, if you can, in the place of the uninitiated; you come along, see an operator quietly seated, reading the newspaper, with his feet elevated on a chair or table, the picture of repose. Suddenly up he jumps, down goes the paper, he seizes a pencil, hurriedly writes a few words, frowns violently, pounds frantically on the table, stares savagely at nothing, bursts suddenly into a broad smile, and then quietly resumes his first position. Wouldn't these seem like rather eccentric gambols to you, if you didn't know their solution?"
"Ha! Doubtless," answered Nattie. "So I suppose I must forgive my observers, and be more careful what I do in future. I have no doubt I often make myself ridiculous to chance beholders, when I am talking with you."
"I wonder if that is complimentary to me?" queried "C."
"Certainly, as it is because you make me laugh so much," Nattie replied.
"Then I am not such a disagreeable fellow as I might be?" demanded "C," evidently attempting to extort flattery.
But before Nattie could answer, some one else opened their key, and said,
"That was not I," Nattie explained, as quickly as possible. "Some of those unpleasant people that can't mind their own business. I was about to say I should not know how to get through the days now, if I hadn't you to talk with."
"Do you really mean it?" questioned "C," delightedly, it is reasonable to suppose. "Truly, I was thinking only last night how unbearable would have been the solitude of my office, had I not been blessed with your company. I was lonesome enough before I knew you, but I never am now."
It was a pity that no telegraphic instrument had yet been invented that could carry the blush on Nattie's cheeks for his eyes to see, because it was so very becoming. She commenced a reply, expressing her pleasure, but was unable to finish it, on account of that unknown and disagreeable operator somewhere on the line, who kept breaking the circuit after every letter she made. Nor was "C" allowed to write anything either. This was a trick by which they had often been annoyed of late.
For, on the wire in the telegraphic world, as well as elsewhere, are idle, mischief-making people, who cannot endure to see others enjoying themselves, if they also have no share.
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.
"Have you seen Cyn to-day? she paid me a flying visit yesterday, and talked a little to 'C,' but I haven't seen her since."
"She went away to sing out of town, let me see—I forget where, and she will not return until to-morrow;" then, uneasily, "I—I beg pardon, but you—you mentioned the Invisible. Do you—I beg pardon—but do you converse as much as ever with him?"
"Yes indeed!" Nattie replied with an ardor that did not produce exactly an enlivening effect upon her caller; "we talk together nearly all the time."
"What—I beg pardon—but really—what do you find to talk about so much?" he inquired jealously.
"Oh, everything! of the books we read, and the good things in the magazines and papers, and the adventures we have—telegraphically; in short, of all the topics of the day. We agree very well too, except on candy, that I like and he doesn't," replied Nattie.
Quimby suppressed a groan, and hastened to assure her that he himself possessed a great passion for sweetmeats.
"But don't you—I beg pardon—but don't you find this sort of thing—'C,' I mean—ghostly, you know?"
"Ghostly!" echoed the astonished Nattie.
"Yes," he replied, with a gesture of his arm that produced an impression as if that member had leaped out of its socket. "Yes, talking with the unseen, you know; I—I beg pardon, but it strikes me as ghostly."
"What a strange fancy!" she exclaimed. "'C' is very real, and of the earth, earthy to me, I assure you!"
Quimby's face lengthened some three inches. "Is he?" he said ruefully. "I—I beg pardon, but you haven't—you don't mean to say that—you have not taken a—bless my soul! how warm it is here!" and he mopped his face with a red silk handkerchief—a color very unbecoming to his complexion.
"Warm!" repeated Nattie, her lips curving in an amused smile, for she had a shawl over her shoulders, and was nevertheless slightly chilly. "I don't perceive it, I am sure."
"I—I beg pardon—but I've been walking, you know," Quimby said nervously. "But I—I was about to ask—I—I beg pardon—but you have not—not" desperately, "really fallen in love with him, have you?"
Nattie's eyes danced with amusement, but her color deepened slightly too, as she replied,
"How could one fall in love with an invisible? why, that would be even less satisfactory than an ideal!"
Quimby's face brightened, and he recovered himself sufficiently to put away the red silk handkerchief.
"I don't think—really, I should not think there could be much satisfaction in it!" then stealing a bashful but adoring glance at her, he added,
"I—I prefer a—a visible, as being something more substantial, you know!"
"Indeed?" said Nattie, demurely; then thinking perhaps he was drifting on to grounds that had best be avoided, she changed the subject, by saying,
"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,
"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!"
And Nattie, judging from his late conduct that the contingency referred to was likely to occur, resolved to be careful and not give him any opportunity to express his feelings, and furthermore, to kindly and cautiously teach him the meaning of the word Friendship, and particularly to define the broad distinction between that and Love.
But circumstances are mulish things, and not to be governed at will, as
Nattie was soon to discover.
A few evenings after she called in to see Cyn, who happened to be out. But she was momentarily expected to return, as Mrs. Simonson said, so Nattie concluded to wait, and sat down at the piano. Not noticing she had left the door partly open, and never dreaming of approaching danger, she began to play, when suddenly, the hesitating voice of Quimby broke in upon the strains of the "First Kiss" waltz.
"I—may I come in?" he asked. "I—I beg your pardon, but I knocked several times, you know, and you didn't hear at all."
Nattie would gladly have refused the invitation he asked, but could think of no possible excuse for so doing, and was therefore compelled to say,
"Yes—come in, I expect Cyn every moment."
Availing himself of this permission, Quimby entered, balanced his hat on the edge of an album, and seating himself in a chair, seized a round on either side as if he was in danger of blowing away, and stared at her without a word.
"It has been a lovely day, hasn't it?" Nattie said at last, beginning to find the silence embarrassing, and reverting to Mrs. Simonson's safe topic.
"Yes—exactly so!" Quimby answered, strengthening his grasp on the chair in a vain endeavor to summon the requisite courage to avail himself of this rare opportunity of pouring out his feelings.
Nattie tried him again on another safe topic.
"Cyn and I dined together to-day."
"I—I can't eat!" burst forth Quimby in accents of despair.
"Can't you?" said Nattie, devoutly wishing Cyn would come. "I am very sorry, I hope you are not dyspeptic."
"No, no!" he answered, his eyes almost starting from his head between his determination to wind himself up to the point, and the tightness of his grasp on the chair. "It's—it's my heart, you know!"
"You don't mean to say you have heart disease?" said Nattie, seeing danger fast approaching, and taking refuge in obtusity.
"No; I—I beg pardon—not a—not a bodily heart disease, you know, but a mental one!" and he relaxed his grasp on the chair with one hand to tug at his necktie as if being hung, and disliking the sensation.
"That is something I never heard of," Nattie said dryly; then thinking,
"I'll drown him in music," she asked hastily,
The bounce of an India rubber ball is no comparison to the agility with which Quimby jumped from his chair at this question.
"Oh! Bless my soul! Wouldn't I?" he gasped.
"I will play it to you," exclaimed Nattie instantly aware of the indiscretion of her question, and she thundered as loud as she could on the piano, while Quimby, with a very red face, subsided into the chair again. But not long did he remain subsided; whether it was the music that inspired im, or a desperate determination that nerved him, he suddenly sprang up, and with one stride was beside her, exclaiming excitedly,
"No! That is—I beg pardon—but please do not play any more just now. There is something I must say to you! Oh! I can't express myself! It all comes upon me with a rush when I am alone, but now, at this supreme moment, I cannot tell you how I a—"
"Excuse me, but I am afraid I cannot remain now," hastily interrupted Nattie, feeling that something must be done to stop him, and adopting the first expedient that suggested itself. "I just happened to recollect I left my gas burning in close proximity to the lace curtains, and I must go immediately and attend to it."
With these words, Nattie rushed away, half amused and half annoyed, leaving him to stare after her with a blank and rueful face, to ask himself how any fellow could get on amid such drawbacks, to decide that proposing was a dreadful strain on the nerves, but to resolve his next attempt should be a success, if he had to inaugurate previously a series of private rehearsals. For although abashed and discomfited by his repeated failures to make his feelings understood, he was more in love than ever.