say. For her own part, although not willing to
offend Miss Kling by saying so, she was glad to see her lodgers enjoying
themselves; more than glad to have Clem there, as on his arrival she had
promptly tacked an extra dollar on the room rent, under the plea that
the wear and tear on furniture was greater with two in a room.

Miss Kling, fearing, perhaps, another reference to "our age," left her,
and next attacked Celeste Fishblate, having long ago discovered Nattie
to be impregnable to the process known as "pumping," a fact that had
augmented her ever-increasing dislike towards her lodger.

From Celeste, she learned that they had "_such_ nice times!" that Mr.
Stanwood was "_so_ splendid!" and that "Miss Archer was just _dead_ in
love with him, and he with her!"

"Humph!" thought Miss Kling with a sneeze. "It's that Miss Archer then,
is it?" Her next move was to arrest poor Quimby in the hall, intending
to put him through a series of interrogations regarding the antecedents
of his friend, and the length of his acquaintance with Miss Archer. But
in this she was baffled, for at the first question, Quimby exclaimed,

"I--I don't know! Don't ask me!" and fled.

Miss Kling, much to her dissatisfaction, was therefore compelled to make
the little she had gathered go as far as it would, for the present. But
she lived in hopes.

It was perhaps not wonderful, that Miss Kling sitting lonely by her
fireside, and pining for her other self, should feel envious because her
lodger, whom she took ostensibly for company, was enjoying herself over
the way evening after evening, and telling her absolutely nothing about
it, but confining their intercourse to the necessary civilities.

Undoubtedly the few weeks that had passed since Clem's appearance on the
scene ought to have been the happiest in Nattie's hitherto lonely life,
happier even than those in which she talked to the then unseen "C," and
speculated about him with Cyn. But yet--she sometimes felt that a
certain something that had been on the wire was lacking now; that Clem,
while realizing all her old expectations of "C," was not exactly what
"C" had been to her. One reason of this she knew was her own inability
to conquer a sort of timidity she felt in his presence, a timidity from
which Cyn was certainly free. Well aware that beside the gay and
brilliant Cyn she was nowhere, Nattie had a sensitive fear that he might
be disappointed in her. But she did not yet know that the f