he--Nattie would have rejected you, in
any case. She is--a flirt!" said Clem, somewhat savagely. "She leads
people on, for the sake of dropping them, when it suits her
convenience!"

"I--now really, I--I cannot think that; even though she had rejected me,
I could not think _that!_" said Quimby, loyally; then with sudden
decision, "I will settle it now! If I had not put it off before, as I
did, I might not have blundered into this awful fix, you know! I hear
them in Cyn's room now; Cyn and Nattie; come with me! I--I will have
witnesses, and no mistakes this time, you know!"

"What are you going to do?" asked Clem, following his excited friend,
rather reluctantly.

"I am going to find out if she--Nattie--likes me, you know! if she does,
I will brave Celeste--her fierce father--the law! if not--why then, I
must be a martyr anyway, you know, and I don't care how big a one I am!"

So saying, Quimby went across to Cyn's room, Clem, not exactly liking
the position thrust upon him, but unwilling to refuse, accompanying him.

Meanwhile, Nattie had pounced upon Cyn, the moment she returned,
exclaiming,

"Oh! Cyn! such a dreadful thing has happened!"

"What? how? when?" asked Cyn, while, from the effects of the melodrama
she had just been witnessing, visions of Clem, with a dozen bullets in
his head, danced before her eyes.

"Quimby! poor Quimby! I have ruined him!" was Nattie's remorseful and
unintelligible answer.

"Well, my dear, if you could possibly be a trifle lucid, perhaps I could
understand the plot of the piece," said Cyn, decidedly relieved of her
first surmise.

Upon which Nattie, half laughing and half crying, explained. But the
ludicrous side was too much for Cyn, and she could only laugh.

"What a farce it would make!" she said, as soon as she could speak.

"Oh, Cyn!" Nattie said, reproachfully. "Think how dreadful it is for
Quimby, and for me, the un-meaning instrument of it all!"

"Nonsense, my dear," said Cyn, more seriously, and bringing her
philosophy to bear on the subject, "It was not your fault! she was
determined to have him in any case! Had it been you, as he supposed, you
would of course have declined the proffered honor, and she would have
caught him in the rebound! If he has spirit enough, he can get out of
marrying her in some way. If not--she will make him a good wife enough.
Men, you know, as she says, prefer to marry women who don't know too
much; so it is all right!"

And with thi