ling
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 relie