CHAPTER XVI.

O. K.

Leaving Clem, on their arrival at the hotel, to bear the burden of the green stuff they had brought from the woods, Cyn, with a trace of melancholy on her sunny face, followed Nattie to her room. For Cyn's joyous picnic, with its gay beginning, had ended sadly enough for her.

"I want to ask you something," Cyn said, with frank directness, as she carefully closed the door behind them. "And that is, are you, can you be foolish enough to imagine, that Clem and I are in love with each other?"

The small basket Nattie held in her hand fell to the floor, at this unexpected question. Had Cyn drawn forth a bowie-knife, and playfully clipped off her nose, she could not have been more astounded.

"If you can possibly reduce your eyes to their ordinary size, and give me a candid yes or no, I will be obliged," Cyn said, rather petulantly, after waiting in vain for an answer. The events of the day had sorely tried her usually even temper.

A little tremulously, while a burning flush covered her face, Nattie answered her,

"I—I have heard it intimated!"

"You have heard it intimated! That means yes, to my question," said Cyn; then sinking despairingly on the lounge, she added, "here is a crisis of which I never dreamed!"

Not understanding very well, and moreover much agitated by the subject,
 Nattie knew not what to say.
 

"This is awful!" went on Cyn, savagely beating the pillow with her fist; "what contrary things love affairs are!"

Fearful of having in some way betrayed her secret—the only conclusion she could draw from Cyn's extraordinary outburst—Nattie stood looking guiltily at the floor a few moments, then recovering herself, she went to Cyn, and said, in a voice full of emotion,

"I do not just comprehend your meaning, dear, but it may be you think I might not quite like the idea, on account of that—that first affair on the wire. If so, dismiss the thought. You and Clem are suited to each other, and—" Nattie stopped, unable to continue.

Cyn, who had been beating the innocent pillow, as if it was the cause of all this, while Nattie was speaking, now threw it across the room, as she exclaimed.

"Oh! the perversity of human nature! Oh! you degenerate girl! As if I cared for Clem in that way! Have I not from the first set my heart on this real-life romance ending in the only way it could rightfully end?"

A sudden light came into Nattie's face, but it died away in a moment.

"Then you do not care for him? Poor Clem!" she said, in a low voice.

"Poor Clem, indeed!" cried Cyn, pacing the floor excitedly. "I cannot—no, I cannot—believe it of him! He certainly has sagacity enough not to run his head against a beam in broad daylight, even—"

"If Jo had not," she was about to add, but checked herself suddenly. Not for the world would she betray Jo's confidence. What had passed between them to-day should be a secret always, never again to be mentioned—but never forgotten in the friendship and companionship of after years.

"You must be very difficult to suit, dear, if you do not like Clem!" said Nattie, with unconscious significance, after waiting in vain for Cyn to finish her sentence.

"It is not that," replied Cyn, somewhat sadly. "Do you not know I have only one love,—music?"

"Poor Clem!" again said Nattie, from the depths of her tender heart.
 "For I know he loves you, dear. He could not help it, who could?"
 

Such words would have been sweet to the vanity of an ordinary woman. But on Cyn they had a very opposite effect.

"Things have come to a pretty pass if one can not laugh and joke, and enjoy one's self with friends without being made love to!" she said, annoyed. Then looking scrutinizingly at Nattie, she asked,

"And you—did you really wish Clem and I might love each other?"

Nattie played nervously with the fringe of her dress, hesitated, then replied in a low tone,

"I fear I did not, Cyn!"

"Then it may come right yet!" exclaimed Cyn, hopefully.

Nattie shook her head.

"And he loving you? Oh, no!" she said. "I shall never be able to say
 O.K. to what you term your romance of the dots and dashes, Cyn. In fact,
 I have made up my mind that there are some people born to go through
 life missing both its best and its worst, and that I am one!"
 

"Pray, do not say that!" urged Cyn, too disturbed to bring her easy philosophy to bear on the situation. "Of all things, do not get morbid."

"But it is the truth!" persisted Nattie. "Even my name, for instance, proves it! I was christened Nathalie, a very fine poetic name. But, in all my life no one ever called me by it! I was always mediocre Nattie!"

"And I have curtailed you down to Nat!" said Cyn, with whimsical remorse. "But what a tangle we are in! First it was the man of musk and bear's grease, who came between you! Then, when he was explained away, came blundering I! Why did you not lock me out of sight somewhere? I would have done it myself had I known—" ironically— "what an extremely fascinating and dangerous person I was!"

At this Nattie could not help smiling.

"Is was not your fault; it was Fate!" she said, her smile becoming a sigh, that Cyn echoed, for she thought of Jo. But yet unconvinced, she said,

"Fate! No; it cannot be! I think better of Clem than to believe he, too, has made a mistake, like Quimby, and fallen in love with the wrong woman!" then starting up, she exclaimed, tragically, "Who? ah! who shall cut the Gordian knot and bring about a crisis that shall cause this 'wired love' to terminate in 'O. K.'?"

As if invoked by Cyn's words, there came a sneeze from outside, and Miss
 Kling pushed open the door unceremoniously.
 

"I wish to have some conversation with you, Miss Rogers," she said in a tone of severity.

"Some other time, if you please," Nattie replied, impatiently, for her talk with Cyn had unnerved her; "just now I am engaged."

Miss Kling drew herself up and said, with even more austerity,

"There is no time like the present, and since Miss Archer is here, it may not be amiss for her to hear what I have to say."

Nattie frowned, but Cyn, not unwilling to be diverted even by Miss Kling from the topic that was so annoying her, said,

"Very well. We are listening, Miss Kling."

"Miss Rogers," proceeded Miss Kling solemnly, after a preparatory sneeze, "I know all."

The emphasis on the last word was truly tremendous, and Nattie started astonished, while Cyn looked up with awakened curiosity.

"May I inquire what you mean by all?" inquired Nattie stiffly.

"Yes," repeated Miss Kling, without heeding the question. "I know ALL. I have for some time suspected that something underhanded was going on. Now I know what it is that has been so carefully concealed from me! I have long objected to your associates, Miss Rogers, but—"

"Pardon me, but that certainly does not concern you!" interrupted Cyn disdainfully.

Miss Kling looked at her and sneezed a sinister sneeze.

"It concerns me to know what kind of people I have in my house!" she replied, "and since you force me to speak out, Miss Archer, I will say that in my opinion no truly modest and proper girl would become intimate with those who pad their legs and paint their faces, and show themselves to the public"—this insinuation struck Cyn so comically that she could hardly suppress a laugh. "My suspicions, to return to what I was about to say, Miss Rogers, were first awakened by hearing that—that instrument"—Cyn and Nattie exchanged looks of intelligence—"you have here going, when I knew you were not in the room. And now, as I said, I know all! I pass over the audacity of such proceedings on my premises, but their utter immorality is too much for me to bear! Yes! I found a wire, and know where it leads! Into the room of two young men! That any young woman should so immodest as to establish telegraphic communication between her bed-room and the bed-room of two young men is beyond my comprehension!"

Cyn felt a mischievous desire to inquire how it would have struck her, had it been the bed-room of one young man? Nattie, who had flushed crimson at the first knowledge of Miss Kling's discovery, now drew herself up and replied with dignity,

"Really, Miss Kling, I think this extravagance of language utterly uncalled for! I admit it was not exactly correct for me to allow the wire to be run without consulting you, but beyond that, there was nothing reprehensible in my conduct."

Miss Kling held up her hands in horror.

"Nothing reprehensible in being connected by a telegraph wire with two young men!" she exclaimed. "Nothing—"

"Excuse my intrusion; but, Cyn, will you please inform me if I am to stand all night loaded with green stuff, like a farmer on a market day?" at this point the merry voice of Clem interrupted, as he came hastily in, still bearing the burden Cyn had piled upon him. Then becoming aware of Miss Kling's presence, he added to her, "I beg pardon for my abrupt entrance, but the outer door being open, I made bold to enter;" then explanatory to Cyn, "Your door was locked, as also was mine, of which Quimby has the key; and as Celeste has not yet been able to part with him, there I have been standing in the hall, like patience with a load of dandelions!"

"We were having such an interesting conversation," Cyn answered, with a scornful glance in Miss Kling's direction, "that I quite forgot you and the lapse of time."

Clem instantly became aware of something amiss in the atmosphere, and glanced around inquiringly. Miss Kling immediately enlightened him.

"There are many things you make bold to do, young man!" she said.
 "Putting telegraph apparatus in my house, for instance!"
 

"Ah!" exclaimed Clem, comprehensively.

"Yes;" went on the aggrieved Miss Kling, "you and that Quimby, I suppose, did it. The idea originated with you, of course. He hasn't brains enough; if he had he would not marry Celeste!" and Miss Kling sniffed in utter contempt of poor Quimby.

"Thanks for the compliment to my intellectual abilities!" said Clem with a mischievous look; then advancing towards her, he answered in his own frank, manly way, "And so you have found us out? But I trust you will not be offended with us? It is, after all, a trifle, and we said nothing about it merely because we wished to have a little mystery of our own! It was, as the newsboys would say, a lark of ours!"

"Lark!" repeated Miss Kling, drawing herself up stiffly; "young man, you will oblige me by not using slang in my presence!"

"Pardon me," said Clem, good humoredly; "and in regard to the wire, blame me, if you must blame any one. As you say, it was all my doing, and I induced Miss Rogers to allow the wire to come into her room."

"And I, too," added Cyn, propitiatingly, for Nattie's sake, "I wished to learn the business, you know!"

But Miss Kling would not propitiate.

"Miss Rogers, I have no doubt, was very ready to be induced!" she said, with an effort at sarcasm. "I have heard of young females so much in love that they would run after and pursue young men, but never before of one so carried away and so lost to every sense of decorum, as to be obliged to have a wire run from her room to his, in order to communicate with him at improper times!"

This accusation, far-fetched and ridiculous as it was, yet being uttered in the presence of Clem, overwhelmed poor Nattie, and she sank on the lounge, burying her face in her hands, at which Clem made a hasty motion, and then, as if aware any interference of his would only make matters worse, checked himself. But Cyn came to the front with striking effect.

"You ought, certainly, to be well informed on the subject of old females who run after old men!" she said, witheringly. "If one may believe what the Tor—what Mr. Fishblate says!"

This shot told. Miss Kling turned livid with rage and mortification, and burst into a terrific spasm of sneezing.

"Miss Rogers," she said, wrathfully, as soon as she recovered sufficiently to speak, "your conduct and that of your associates is such, that I can no longer allow you to remain on my premises.

"Miss Kling, this is—is very unjust,", said the agitated Nattie.

"It is against the wishes of her friends that she has remained as long as she has," cried Cyn, hotly.

"Miss Kling, your proceedings are infamous!" exclaimed Clem, not able to contain himself longer.

Rather afraid to draw out Cyn any more, Miss Kling gladly seized this opportunity to attack Clem.

"Young man, what right have you to interfere?" she inquired, majestically.

Clem bit his lip. Sure enough, what right had he?

He glanced at Nattie where she sat, pale and disturbed, at the scene that threatened to end seriously for her, and then, obeying a sudden impulse, seized the key at his side, and called,

"N—N—N!"

Nattie looked up quickly, and while Miss Kling, who supposed he was wantonly drumming on the obnoxious instrument to exasperate her, vented her indignation, and also the outraged feelings caused by the Torpedo-wound inflicted by Cyn, still rankling, in a wrathful homily to which no one listened, for Cyn was watching Clem curiously, he wrote rapidly, his eyes on the sounder,

"She says I have no right to interfere. If you had not so changed towards me—if I could hope you loved me as I have ever loved you, I would ask you to give me the right, and let me put this pernicious discredit to her sex on the other side of that door!"

As these words in dots and dashes came to her ears, Nattie, forgetting Miss Kling, forgetting everything, except that she loved Clem, and Clem declared—could it be possible—that he loved her, arose hastily, with a quick joy suffusing her face, and then their eyes met, and neither words or dots and dashes were needed. Love, more potent than electricity, required no interpreter, and that most powerful of all magnets drew them together. Before the face and eyes of the amazed Miss Kling, who had just delivered herself of a sentence intended to be crushing, and could not conceive why her victim should suddenly look so happy over it, he advanced to Nattie's side, clasped her hand eagerly and tenderly, then turning to Miss Kling, said, while Cyn, surmising the truth of the matter, embraced herself fervently,

"Miss Kling, any farther observations you may have to make, you will be good enough to say to me, hereafter; and now, will you oblige me by leaving the room?" and he politely held open the door.

"What?" gasped Miss Kling, hardly believing her own ears.

"I cannot allow you to annoy Miss Rogers, the lady who is to be my wife!" Clem added; "and if she and I choose to have twelve telegraph wires, we will. Let me bid you good-evening!" and he pointed significantly at the open door.

"Your wife! Miss Rogers!" echoed the discomfited Miss Kling, and glanced at the blushing Nattie, at Cyn, undisguisedly exultant, and at Clem, determinedly waiting for her to go out. This was something she had not expected, and it took her aback. So, with a sneeze, she drew herself up, gave a spiteful parting shot,

"Well, she has worked hard enough to get you—had to bring the telegraph to her assistance!" and then retreated, before Cyn could retaliate with the Torpedo. Retreated to her own room, to nurse her wrath and envy, and to dream hopelessly, forever more, of that other self, never to come nearer than now!

The discreet Cyn, comprehending that Miss Kling had brought about that, "crisis," and that something had been said on the wire to the right purpose, followed her out, and left them alone. It is hardly necessary to mention, that as soon as the door closed behind Cyn, Clem took Nattie in his arms and kissed her. It was an inevitable consequence.

"And now explain why you have treated me so, you contrary little girl?" he queried, tenderly.

"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 O. K.; 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 any one is anxious to know what Clem wrote when Nattie stopped him, here it is.

MY LITTLE DARLING MY WIFE

[Transcriber's Note. The concluding three lines were printed in the American Railroad dialect of Morse. It cannot easily be represented in ASCII as it requires dashes of different lengths]

THE END