"Oh! really, you know! its no matter! I--I am used to it, you know!" "Used to falling in love?" queried Nattie, with raised eyebrows. "No--no--the other, you know, that is--" gasped Quimby, hopelessly lost for a substantive. "I mean, it's a mistake, you know" then with a desperate rush away from the embarrassing subject, "Did you know we--that is, Mrs. Simonson, was going to have a new lodger?" "No, is she?" asked Nattie. "Yes, a young lady coming to-morrow, a--a sort of an actress--no, a prima donna, you know. A Miss Archer. If you and she should happen to like each other, it would be pleasant for you, now wouldn't it?" asked Quimby eagerly, with a devout hope that such might be, for then should he not be a gainer by seeing more often the young lady by his side, whose gray eyes had already made havoc in his honest and susceptible heart. "It would be pleasant," acquiesced Nattie, in utter unconsciousness of Quimby's selfish hidden thought; "for I am lonely sometimes. Miss Kling is not--not--" "Oh, certainly! of course not!" Quimby responded sympathetically and understandingly, as Nattie hesitated for a word that would express her meaning. "They never are very adaptable--old maids, you know!" "But it isn't because they are unmarried," said Nattie, perhaps feeling called upon to defend her future self, "but because they were born so!" "Exactly, you know, that's why no fellow ever marries them!" said Quimby, with a glance of bashful admiration at his companion. Nattie laughed. "And this Miss Archer. Did you say she was a prima donna?" she questioned. "Yes--that is, a sort of a kind of a one, or going to be, or some way musical or theatrical, you know," was Quimby's lucid reply. "I'll make it a point to--to introduce you if you will allow me that pleasure?" "Certainly," responded Nattie, and added, "I shall be quite rich, for me, in acquaintances soon, if I continue as I have begun. I made a new one on the wire to-day." "On the--I beg pardon--on the what?" asked Quimby, with visions of tight-ropes flashing through his mind. "On the wire," repeated Nattie, to whom the phrase was so common, that it never occurred to her as needing any explanation. "Oh!" said the puzzled Quimby, not at all comprehending, but unwilling to confess his ignorance. "The worst of it is, I don't know the sex of my new friend, which makes it a little awkward," continued Nattie. Quimby stared. "Don't--I beg pardon--don't know her--his--sex?" he repeated, with wide-open eyes. "No, it was on the wire, you know!" again explained Nattie, privately thinking him unusually stupid; "about seventy miles away. We first quarreled and then had a pleasant talk." "Talk--seventy miles--" faltered the perplexed Quimby; then brightening, "Oh! I see! a telephone, you know!"