I missed you
last night after you had gone home, for instance. "But _you_, a great,
hulking fellow! No, indeed! In my mind's eye--"

But what was in "C's" mind's eye did not just then appear, for at this
interesting point some one at Nattie's window, saying. "I would like to
send a message," obliged her reluctantly to interrupt him with,

"Excuse me a moment, a customer is waiting."

She then turned as much of her attention as she could separate from "C"
to the customer, enabled, perhaps, to answer the volley of miscellaneous
questions poured upon her with unusual affability, on account of the
settlement--and in the right direction!--of that vexed question of "C's"
sex.

But she could not help thinking, as she glanced at the message finally
written, and handed to her that had the writer attended a little more to
the spelling-book, and a little less to the accumulation of diamond
rings, it might have been a very wise proceeding. But perhaps

"Meat me at the train," was sufficiently intelligible for all purposes.

"What was it about your mind's eye?" Nattie asked over the wire, at the
first opportunity.

"C" was again on the alert, without being called, for the answer came,
after a moment, just long enough for him to cross the room, perhaps.

"As I was saying, in the eye aforesaid, me thinks I see a tall slim
young lady with blue eyes and light hair, and dimples that come into her
cheeks when I stupidly betray my sex."

As "C" said this, Nattie glanced into the glass just over her head at
the reflection of her face. A face whose expression was its charm; that
never could be called pretty, but that nevertheless suggested a
possibility--only a possibility, of being handsome. For there is a vast
difference between pretty and handsome. Pretty people seldom know very
much; but to be handsome, a person must have brains; an inner as well as
an outer beauty.

"How fortunate it is you are not near enough to be disenchanted!" Nattie
replied to "C." "Your mind's eye is very unreliable. Tall! why, I'm
only five feet! never was guilty of a dimple, and my eyes are of some
dreadfully nondescript color."

"If you are only five feet, you never can look down on me, which is a
great consolation," "C" responded. "And for the rest imagination will
clothe the unseen with all possible beauty and grace."

"I am sure I am perfectly willing you should imagine me as beautiful as
you please," replied Nattie, "As long as we don't come