ached her
nostrils.

"Thank you! I--I never knew any one who understood me as well as you!"
he said with a grateful bow, and without more words, Cyn left him.

"How long you have been gone!" Nattie remarked, looking up, her cheeks
very red, and her nose embellished with a streak of smut, as Cyn
entered. "Did you see any one?"

"No one except Quimby, who stopped me to ask about bringing a friend to
call some evening," Cyn replied, displaying the fruit, and producing the
soap-dish.

"Mercy on us!" Nattie said, looking rather aghast, "it is rather large,
isn't it? and what did you bring-that soap-dish for?"

"I thought it might come handy," laughed Cyn. "We will make a potato
holder of it for the time. 'To what base uses may we come at
last?'--Why--" in a tone of surprise, "here is the Duchess!"

And sure enough, up by the window sat that sagacious animal, winking and
blinking complacently, and evidently determined to be a third in the
feast.

"She came in unnoticed under the shadow that fruit-dish threw," said
Nattie, teasingly.

Cyn shook an oyster fork at her threateningly.

"Say another such word and you shall have no steak!" she said
tragically, "instead, a dungeon shall be your doom. We will let the
Duchess remain as a receiver of odds and ends. I suppose her suspicions
were excited by the sight of these articles. A rare cat! a learned cat!
now please set the table, for our feast will soon be prepared!" and Cyn
bent over the sizzling steak, that emitted a most appetizing odor.

Setting that table was no such easy matter as might appear, for what
with the big fruit-dish, wooden covers, different sizes of plates and
other incongruous articles, considerable management was necessary.

"I shall have to put the sugar on in the bag," Nattie said, incautiously
backing to view the general effect, and so stumbling over the saucepan
of potatoes that sat on the floor, but luckily doing no damage.

"Ah, well! Eccentricity is quite the rage now, you know," responded the
philosophical Cyn, "and certainly, a sugar-bowl so closely resembling a
brown paper bag as not to be distinguishable from the real thing, is
quite _recherche_. But my dear Nat, where am I to set the steak if you
have that big fruit-dish in the center of the table, taking up all the
room?"

"I shall have to put it on the floor, then," Nattie answered,
despairingly, "for I have tried it on all parts of the table! If you set
it on the edge," she added