"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 a.s.sociates 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 s.e.x 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 a.s.sistance!" 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 pa.s.s 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 subst.i.tuted 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."