y in their closet, fearing alarm lest it might eat through
the room and overpower her.

"And now," said Clem, gayly, when all was finished, and fortunately
without attracting attention, not even Celeste being in the secret;
"now, Quimby, we can dispense with that alarm clock we were intending to
buy."

"I--I beg pardon, but I--I don't quite catch your meaning," the martyr
replied, in evident surprise.

"Why, Nat is to be our alarm clock!" explained Clem, laughing. "She is,
from necessity, an early riser, and I shall depend on her to call on our
wire at precisely six thirty every morning, and continue calling until I
answer."

"I certainly will," Nattie replied. "But I will venture to predict that
both you and Quimby will privately call me all sorts of names for doing
it. It makes people so very cross to be aroused from a morning nap, you
know!"

"It doesn't make _me_ cross, I--I assure you; it--it will be a pleasure!"
quickly exclaimed Quimby, who was delighted with this idea of the alarm
clock.

"I will report him if he shows the least symptom of growling, after that
assertion!" Clem said to Nattie, somewhat to Quimby's internal
agitation, for, to tell the truth, he was not really quite certain of
being in a state of rapture at six thirty every morning, even when awoke
by the clatter of a sounder, of which the motive power was his
inamorata.

"And now, to christen our wire!" Nattie, who was in high spirits, said
gayly, and she ran over to her room, and a half hour's chat with "C"
followed before she went to bed. For a week after, however, she lived,
as it were, on thorns, and came home every night half expecting an
explosion.

None came, however. Miss Kling's eyes were not as good as they once had
been, what with their long service watching for that other self, and
overlooking her neighbors; the hall was dark; she had no duplicate key
to Nattie's always-locked room, and the small wire, nestling close to
the wall, was undiscovered; of course, she heard the clatter of the
sounder, but this Nattie explained on the score of "practice."

"Well, I am sure!" said Miss Kling, snappishly, "I should think you
would get 'practice' enough at the office, without sitting up nights to
do it!"

At which Nattie turned away to hide a blush, aware that "C" and she
sometimes talked even into the small hours, in their zeal, doubtless,
that the new wire should not rust out for lack of using.

But this telegraphic arrangement