questioner, who, looking as if he expected her to be enraptured,
added,

"You know a fellow that signs 'C,' don't you?"

The bump of self-conceit must have largely overbalanced the perceptive
faculties of this obnoxious young man, if he could possibly mistake the
expression on Nattie's face for rapture, as, frantically grasping the
umbrella, she gasped,

"No--no--it can't be--you are not--not--"

"Not C? Ain't I, though!" laughed the proprietor of the ring, pin,
bear's-grease, et cetera.

"But," said poor Nattie, clinging desperately to hope and the umbrella,
"C said this morning he was going to B a--and--"

"That was a trick to take you by surprise," he interrupted, with great
enjoyment of his own words. "I knew I was coming here, all the time, but
I wanted to give you a nice little surprise. Think I have, eh?" and he
laughed again, and winked with almost vulgar assurance.

Nattie let go of hope and the umbrella, and collapsed with her romance
into a chair; and she thought of Quimby's warning about the "soiled
invisible," and barely suppressed a groan. Involuntarily she stole a
glance at this too-visible person, and shuddered. Could she reconcile
"C," her visionary, interesting, witty and gentlemanly "C" of the wire,
with this musk-scented being of greasy red hair, cheap jewelry and
vulgar manners? Impossible!

"It is the nightmare! it cannot be!" she thought, with the despairing
refuge in dreams we often take when suddenly overwhelmed with terrible
realities.

As she made no reply to his last observation, her visitor, glancing at
her as if slightly puzzled by her behavior, went on--

"I did not think you would be so bashful, after all our talks. _I_ am
not,"--a fact hardly necessary to mention. "We ought to be pretty good
friends by this time. Say, do I look as you expected I would? and as if
to give her a better view, he pushed his hat back on his head, a
kindness wholly unappreciated, as Nattie had seen more than sufficient
of him already.

"Not--not exactly!" she stammered, in a sort of dazed way.

"I believe you thought I was one of those slim fellows whose bones
rattle when they walk, didn't you? I am no such a fellow, you see. But
you ain't a bit as I imagined. May I be a plug [1] forever if you are!"

[1] "Plug" is the common telegraphic expression for an incompetent
operartor.

Nattie was too wretched, too unable even yet to realize that her "C" and
this odious creature were one and the same