Page:Wired Love (Thayer 1880).djvu/176

Rh Fishblate, having long ago discovered Nattie to be impregnable to the process known as "pumping," a fact that had augmented her ever-increasing dislike towards her lodger.

From Celeste, she learned that they had "such nice times!" that Mr. Stanwood was "so splendid!" and that "Miss Archer was just dead in love with him, and he with her!"

"Humph!" thought Miss Kling with a sneeze.

"It's that Miss Archer then, is it?" Her next move was to arrest poor Quimby in the hall, intending to put him through a series of interrogations regarding the antecedents of his friend, and the length of his acquaintance with Miss Archer. But in this she was baffled, for at the first question, Quimby exclaimed,

"I—I don't know! Don't ask me!" and fled.

Miss Kling, much to her dissatisfaction, was therefore compelled to make the little she had gathered go as far as it would, for the present. But she lived in hopes.

It was perhaps not wonderful, that Miss Kling sitting lonely by her fireside, and pining for her other self, should feel envious because her lodger, whom she took ostensibly for company, was enjoying herself over the way evening after evening, and