Page:Wired Love (Thayer 1880).djvu/218

Rh "What are you going to do?" asked Clem, following his excited friend, rather reluctantly.

"I am going to find out if she—Nattie—likes me, you know! if she does, I will brave Celeste—her fierce father—the law! if not—why then, I must be a martyr anyway, you know, and I don't care how big a one I am!"

So saying, Quimby went across to Cyn's room, Clem, not exactly liking the position thrust upon him, but unwilling to refuse, accompanying him.

Meanwhile, Nattie had pounced upon Cyn, the moment she returned, exclaiming,

"Oh! Cyn! such a dreadful thing has happened!"

"What? how? when?" asked Cyn, while, from the effects of the melodrama she had just been witnessing, visions of Clem, with a dozen bullets in his head, danced before her eyes.

"Quimby! poor Quimby! I have ruined him!" was Nattie's remorseful and unintelligible answer.

"Well, my dear, if you could possibly be a trifle lucid, perhaps I could understand the plot of the piece," said Cyn, decidedly relieved of her first surmise.

Upon which Nattie, half laughing and half crying, explained. But the ludicrous side was too much for Cyn, and she could only laugh.