"I--I beg pardon, but I--I don't quite catch your meaning," the martyr replied, in evident surprise. "Why, Nat is to be our alarm clock!" explained Clem, laughing. "She is, from necessity, an early riser, and I shall depend on her to call on our wire at precisely six thirty every morning, and continue calling until I answer." "I certainly will," Nattie replied. "But I will venture to predict that both you and Quimby will privately call me all sorts of names for doing it. It makes people so very cross to be aroused from a morning nap, you know!" "It doesn't make _me_ cross, I--I assure you; it--it will be a pleasure!" quickly exclaimed Quimby, who was delighted with this idea of the alarm clock. "I will report him if he shows the least symptom of growling, after that assertion!" Clem said to Nattie, somewhat to Quimby's internal agitation, for, to tell the truth, he was not really quite certain of being in a state of rapture at six thirty every morning, even when awoke by the clatter of a sounder, of which the motive power was his inamorata. "And now, to christen our wire!" Nattie, who was in high spirits, said gayly, and she ran over to her room, and a half hour's chat with "C" followed before she went to bed. For a week after, however, she lived, as it were, on thorns, and came home every night half expecting an explosion. None came, however. Miss Kling's eyes were not as good as they once had been, what with their long service watching for that other self, and overlooking her neighbors; the hall was dark; she had no duplicate key to Nattie's always-locked room, and the small wire, nestling close to the wall, was undiscovered; of course, she heard the clatter of the sounder, but this Nattie explained on the score of "practice." "Well, I am sure!" said Miss Kling, snappishly, "I should think you would get 'practice' enough at the office, without sitting up nights to do it!" At which Nattie turned away to hide a blush, aware that "C" and she sometimes talked even into the small hours, in their zeal, doubtless, that the new wire should not rust out for lack of using. But this telegraphic arrangement came hardest on poor Quimby, who, between his jealousy when the two were communicating, his inability to understand what was being said, and the impossibility of sleeping with such a clatter in the room, lost his appetite, and invoked anything but blessings on the head of "that Morse man," who had made such things possible. Cyn had no intention of being left out in the cold, and making Jo join her, began the study of telegraphy, and the two hammered away incessantly. It began to be observable, about this time, that Jo was very willing to be led about by the nose by Cyn. Why, was not so apparent; perhaps because there was no romance in it.