"Have you hurt yourself?" Nattie asked, as she went down to where the hero of the catastrophe sat on the bottom stair, ruefully rubbing his elbow, but who now picked up his hat and the fire-bucket, and rose to explain.
"It's nothing—nothing at all, you know!" he said, looking upward, and bowing to the voices; "I caught my foot in the rug, and—"
"Did you tear the rug?" here anxiously interrupted the listening Mrs. Simonson, suddenly appearing at the banisters; not that she felt for her lodger less, but for the rug more, a distinction arising from that constant struggle with the "ways and means."
"Oh, no! I assure you, there was no damage done to the rug—or fire-bucket," the victim responded, reassuringly, and in perfect good faith. "Or myself," he added modestly, as if the latter was scarce worth speaking of. "I—I am used to it, you know," reverting to his usual expression in accidents of all descriptions.
"I declare I don't know what you will do next!" muttered Mrs. Simonson, retreating to examine the rug.
"I think you must be in love, Quimby!" giggled Celeste; an assertion that caused Miss Kling to give vent to a contemptuous "Humph" and awakened in its subject the most excruciating embarrassment. The poor fellow glanced at Nattie, blushed, perspired, and frantically clutching at the fire-bucket, stammered a protest—
"Now really—I—now!—you are mistaken, you know!"
"But people who are in love are always absent-minded," persisted
Celeste, with another giggle. "So it is useless to—"
But exactly what was useless did not appear, as at this point a stentorian voice, the voice of Miss Kling's "fine, sensible man," roared,
"Enough!"
At which, to Quimby's relief, Celeste, always in mortal fear of her father, hastily withdrew. Not so Miss Kling. She silently waited to see if Nattie and Quimby would go out together, and was rewarded by hearing the latter ask, as Nattie made a movement towards the door—
"May I—might I be so bold as to—as to ask to be your escort?"
"I should be pleased," Nattie answered, adding with a mischievous glance, but in a low tone, aware of the listening ears above—
"That is, if you will consent to dispense with the fire-bucket!"
Quimby started, and dropping the article in question, as if it had suddenly turned red-hot, ejaculated—
"Bless my soul! really I—I beg pardon, I am sure!" then bashfully offering his arm, they went out, while Miss Kling balefully shook her head.
"So, Celeste will insist upon it that you are in love, because you tripped and fell down stairs!" Nattie said, by way of opening a conversation as they walked along—a remark that did not tend to lessen his evident disquietude. And having now no fire-bucket, he clutched at his necktie, twirling it all awry, not at all to the improvement of his personal appearance, as he replied—
"Oh! really, you know! its no matter! I—I am used to it, you know!"
"Used to falling in love?" queried Nattie, with raised eyebrows.
"No—no—the other, you know, that is—" gasped Quimby, hopelessly lost for a substantive. "I mean, it's a mistake, you know" then with a desperate rush away from the embarrassing subject, "Did you know we—that is, Mrs. Simonson, was going to have a new lodger?"
"No, is she?" asked Nattie.
"Yes, a young lady coming to-morrow, a—a sort of an actress—no, a prima donna, you know. A Miss Archer. If you and she should happen to like each other, it would be pleasant for you, now wouldn't it?" asked Quimby eagerly, with a devout hope that such might be, for then should he not be a gainer by seeing more often the young lady by his side, whose gray eyes had already made havoc in his honest and susceptible heart.
"It would be pleasant," acquiesced Nattie, in utter unconsciousness of Quimby's selfish hidden thought; "for I am lonely sometimes. Miss Kling is not—not—"
"Oh, certainly! of course not!" Quimby responded sympathetically and understandingly, as Nattie hesitated for a word that would express her meaning. "They never are very adaptable—old maids, you know!"
"But it isn't because they are unmarried," said Nattie, perhaps feeling called upon to defend her future self, "but because they were born so!"
"Exactly, you know, that's why no fellow ever marries them!" said
Quimby, with a glance of bashful admiration at his companion.
Nattie laughed.
"And this Miss Archer. Did you say she was a prima donna?" she questioned.
"Yes—that is, a sort of a kind of a one, or going to be, or some way musical or theatrical, you know," was Quimby's lucid reply. "I'll make it a point to—to introduce you if you will allow me that pleasure?"
"Certainly," responded Nattie, and added, "I shall be quite rich, for me, in acquaintances soon, if I continue as I have begun. I made a new one on the wire to-day."
"On the—I beg pardon—on the what?" asked Quimby, with visions of tight-ropes flashing through his mind.
"On the wire," repeated Nattie, to whom the phrase was so common, that it never occurred to her as needing any explanation.
"Oh!" said the puzzled Quimby, not at all comprehending, but unwilling to confess his ignorance.
"The worst of it is, I don't know the sex of my new friend, which makes it a little awkward," continued Nattie.
Quimby stared.
"Don't—I beg pardon—don't know her—his—sex?" he repeated, with wide-open eyes.
"No, it was on the wire, you know!" again explained Nattie, privately thinking him unusually stupid; "about seventy miles away. We first quarreled and then had a pleasant talk."
"Talk—seventy miles—" faltered the perplexed Quimby; then brightening,
"Oh! I see! a telephone, you know!"
"No indeed!" replied Nattie, laughing at his incomprehensibility. "We don't need telephones. We can talk without—did you not know that? And what is better, no one but those who understand our language can know what we say!"
"Exactly!" answered Quimby, relapsing again into wonder. "Exactly—on the wire!"
"Yes, we talk in a language of dots and dashes, that even Miss Kling might listen to in vain. And do you know," she went on confidentially, "somehow, I am very much interested in my new friend. I wish I knew—its so awkward, as I said—but I really think it's a gentleman!"
"Exactly—exactly so!" responded Quimby, somewhat dejectedly. And during the remainder of their walk he was very much harassed in his mind over this interest Nattie confessed in her new friend—"on the wire,"—who would appear as a tight-rope performer to his perturbed imagination. And he felt in his inmost heart that it would be a great relief to his mind if this mysterious person should prove a lady, even though, if a gentleman, he was many miles away. For Quimby, with all his obtusity, had an inkling of the power of mystery, and was already far enough on the road to love to be jealous.
Of these thoughts Nattie was of course wholly unaware, and chatted gayly, now of the distant "C" and now of the coming Miss Archer, to her somewhat abstracted, but always devoted companion.
CHAPTER III.
VISIBLE AND INVISIBLE FRIENDS.
With perhaps one or two less frowns than usual at the destiny that compelled her to forego any morning