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32 any means that you are in love with Quimby! You are much too sensible a young lady for such folly!" Nattie shrugged her shoulders, as if tired of the subject, and after a spasm of sneezing, Miss Kling continued:

"As you intimate, he means all right, poor fellow! and that is more than I should be willing to acknowledge regarding Mrs. Simonson's other lodger, that Mr. Norton, who calls himself an artist. I am sure I never saw any one except a convict wear such short hair!" and Miss Kling shook her head insinuatingly.

From this beginning, to Nattie's dismay, Miss Kling proceeded to the dissection of their neighbors who lived in the suite above, Celeste Fishblate and her father. The former, Miss Kling declared, was setting her cap for Quimby. Mr. Fishblate being an unquestionably disagreeable specimen of the genus homo, with a somewhat startling habit of exploding in short, but expressive sentences—never using more than three consecutive words—Nattie naturally expected to hear him even more severely anathematized than any one else. But to her surprise, the lady conducting the conversation declared him a "fine sensible man!" At which Nattie first stared, and then smiled, as it occurred