hould be but the beginning
of many. The circumstance was recalled to her mind, however, and
explained the next day, for on returning from the office she found under
her door a pen and ink sketch, of which she knew at once Cyn was the
designer, and Mr. Norton the executor. It represented two rooms, one on
each side of a partition; in one was a table, containing the ordinary
telegraphic apparatus, before which sat a young lady strangely
resembling Miss Nattie Rogers, with her face beaming with smiles, and
her hand grasping the key. In the other, a young man with a very
battered hat knelt before the sounder on his table, while behind him an
urchin with a message in his hand stared unnoticed, open-mouthed and
unheard; far above was Cupid, connecting the wires that ran from the
gentleman to the lady.

"What nonsense!" murmured Nattie, laughing to herself; but' she put the
picture away in her writing desk as carefully as she might some
cherished memento.

CHAPTER V.

QUIMBY BURSTS FORTH IN ELOQUENCE.

"That young lady over there acts very strangely. She is not crazy, is
she?" inquired a gentleman who stood leaning against the counter over
the way, and looking across at Nattie.

"I don't know what to make of her," the previously mentioned clerk, to
whom this question was addressed, answered, "I have been observing her
for some weeks; she sits half the time as you see her now, laughing to
herself and gesticulating. Sometimes she will lean back in her chair and
absolutely shake with laughter, and she smiles at vacancy continually.
She seems all right enough with the ex-ception of these vagaries. But
she is a perfect conundrum to me."

"A bit luny, I think," said the gentleman, who had asked the question.

Just then, Nattie, who, of course, was talking to "C," and telling him
about that sketch--with the slight reservation of the Cupid,--happened
to look up, with her gaze seventy miles away; but becoming aware of the
curious stares of the two gentlemen opposite, her vision shortened
itself to near objects, and rightly surmising from their looks the tenor
of their thoughts, she colored, and straightway turned her back, at the
same time informing "C" of what she termed their impertinence. But "C"
answered, with a laugh,

"It cannot but look strange, you know, to outsiders, to see a person
making such an ado apparently over nothing. Put yourself, if you can, in
the place of the uninitiated; you come along, see an