Page:Wired Love (Thayer 1880).djvu/133

126 "Thank you! I—I never knew any one who understood me as well as you!" he said with a grateful bow, and without more words, Cyn left him.

"How long you have been gone!" Nattie remarked, looking up, her cheeks very red, and her nose embellished with a streak of smut, as Cyn entered. "Did you see any one?"

"No one except Quimby, who stopped me to ask about bringing a friend to call some evening," Cyn replied, displaying the fruit, and producing the soap-dish.

"Mercy on us!" Nattie said, looking rather aghast, "it is rather large, isn't it? and what did you bring that soap-dish for?"

"I thought it might come handy," laughed Cyn. We will make a potato holder of it for the time. 'To what base uses may we come at last?'—Why—"in a tone of surprise, "here is the Duchess!"

And sure enough, up by the window sat that sagacious animal, winking and blinking complacently, and evidently determined to be a third in the feast.

"She came in unnoticed under the shadow that fruit-dish threw," said Nattie, teasingly.

Cyn shook an oyster fork at her threateningly.

"Say another such word and you shall have no