"The _undertaking_ will not be difficult; with all my heart!" "C" answered, and with this mutual understanding they bade each other "good-night." "There certainly is something romantic in talking to a mysterious person, unseen, and miles away!" thought Nattie, as she put on her hat. "But I would really like to know whether my new friend employs a tailor or a dressmaker!". Was Nattie conscious of a feeling that it would add to the zest of the romantic acquaintance should the distant "C" be entitled to the use of the masculine pronoun? Perhaps so! For Nattie was human, and was only nineteen! CHAPTER II. AT THE HOTEL NORMAN. Miss Nattie Rogers, telegraph operator, lived, as it were, in two worlds. The one her office, dingy and curtailed as to proportions, but from whence she could wander away through the medium of that slender telegraph wire, on a sort of electric wings, to distant cities and towns; where, although alone all day, she did not lack social intercourse, and where she could amuse herself if she chose, by listening to and speculating upon the many messages of joy or of sorrow, of business and of pleasure, constantly going over the wire. But the other world in which Miss Rogers lived was very different; the world bounded by the four walls of a back room at Miss Betsey Kling's. It must be confessed that there are more pleasing views than sheds in greater or less degrees of dilapidation, a sickly grape-vine, a line of flapping sheets, an overflowing ash barrel; sweeter sounds than the dulcet notes of old rag-men, the serenades of musical cats, or the strains of a cornet played upon at intervals from nine P. M. to twelve, with the evident purpose of exhausting superfluous air in the performer's lungs. Perhaps, too, there was more agreeable company possible than Miss Betsey Kling. Therefore, in the evening, Sunday and holiday, if not in the telegraphic world of Miss Rogers, loneliness, and the unpleasant sensation known as "blues" are not uncommon. Miss Betsey Kling, who, although in reduced circumstances, boasted of certain "blue blood," inherited from dead and gone ancestors--who perhaps would have been surprised could they have known at this late day how very genteel they were in life,--rented a flat in Hotel Norman, on the second floor, of which she let one room; not on account of the weekly emolument received therefrom, ah, no! but "for the sake of having some one for company." In this respect she was truly a contrast to Mrs. Simonson, a hundred and seventy-five pound widow, who lived in the remaining suite of that floor, and who let every room she possibly could, in order, as she frankly confessed, to "make both ends meet." For a constant struggle with the "ways and means" whereby to live had quite annihilated any superfluous gentility Mrs. Simonson might have had, excepting only one lingering remnant, that would never allow her to hang in the window one of those cheaply conspicuous placards, announcing: "Rooms to Let."