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96 "No, thank you," he answered; then, with an insinuating smile,

"Can't you guess who I am?" "I really can't," Nattie replied, coldly and indifferently; thinking, "some of the operators down town, I suppose, and a delightful set they are if he is a specimen! So impertinent of him!"

"Can't you?" laughing and displaying his obtrusive teeth to their utmost advantage. "Now just think of some one you have been buzzing lately, and then guess, won't you, N?" Without the least suspicion Nattie shook her head impatiently, feeling very much disgusted, and longing for some interruption to occur. But his next words were startling. Leaning forward very confidentially, he asked with a smile of consciousness,

"Do you see that twinkle, N?"

"What!" ejaculated Nattie—so forcibly that a passing countryman stopped with a peanut half cracked, to stare—and clutching at an umbrella hanging by her side, for support, she turned a horror-stricken face to the questioner, who, looking as if he expected her to be enraptured, added,

"You know a fellow that signs 'C,' don't you?"

The bump of self-conceit must have largely over-balanced the perceptive faculties of this obnoxious