“Oh, Cis!” murmured Nan Dowling, Cis’s next neighbor, at whom she had winked. “You do say such ridiculous things, and such just-right ones! You ought to write. That’s Amelia all over; she does disagree with herself--little sour ball!” “Thought we agreed not to fuss about her,” hinted Cis. “I don’t have to, as long as my shift follows hers; I don’t have more than a ships-that-pass-in-the-night, _au revoir_ intercourse with Miss Day.” “No, but I do! I have her from nine to one, except during lunch, right in your place! Why aren’t you on all through my shift, you blessed old duck, Cis?” cried Nan. “Never could answer whys, Nan; nothing harder,” said Cis cheerfully. “Be glad you’ve got the chance to sun yourself in the light of my hair from one to six! And that we don’t get a whole lot of calls on our wires, usually, till after three, so we can ‘chin.’” “Amelia is raving jealous of you, Cis, and you know why!” said Nan. “She’d have your scalp, if she could get it.” “If she could get it she’d be welcome to it,” declared Cis imperturbably. “Anyone that lets a person get her hands on her scalp so she can lift it, deserves to be scalped; that’s what I say! Amelia can’t harm me as long as I do my work and tend strictly to my own affairs. If you mean that Amelia Day is still stewing because that puffy Harold Brown thought he’d enjoy thinking that he thought a lot of me--” Cis shrugged her shoulders to conclude her sentence. “Stuff!” she added. Nan laughed, but she looked anxious. “All the same, Amelia would love to get you out, Cis,” she said. “Of course you don’t care a rap what Harold Brown does--” “Care!” Cis interrupted her. “Ever see a chestnut worm?” Both girls went off into a spasm of laughter, subdued, not to disturb their companions. Harold Brown was large, plump, puffy and abnormally white; nothing was needed to point Cis’s rhetorical question. “Oh, Cis!” sighed Nan, as she sighed many times a day, in fervent, admiring delight over Cicely’s high spirits. “Such a Cis!” Nan had a call just then, but when she had answered it and was free again, she turned to Cis. “It’s not only Harold Brown, Cis; you don’t seem to care about any of them,” she said. “Meaning boys and men?” asked Cis. “Wrong you are, my Nanny: I love ’em all.” “Yes, like one of themselves!” retorted Nan. “But not the way they do you! You’re like a jolly boy yourself, friendly as anything, but you don’t--And there are lots of them crazy about you! You make them sort of crazy over you, Cis, with your come-on-stand-off way, and your sort of--heady charm, like champagne!” “Oh, say!” protested Cis. “Much you know about champagne, kid dear! You got that out of a novel; own up! The price of it per bottle, and the Eighteenth sitting on the bottles, shows that’s a pure flight of fancy! Stick to facts, Anna Dowling! Me heady! I should say not!”