plained 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!"
"No indeed!" replied Nattie, laughing at his incomprehensibility. "We don't need telephones. We can talk without—did you not know that? And what is better, no one but those who understand our language can know what we say!"
"Exactly!" answered Quimby, relapsing again into wonder. "Exactly—on the wire!"
"Yes, we talk in a language of dots and dashes, that even Miss Kling might listen to in vain. And do you know," she went on confidentially, "somehow, I am very much interested in my new friend. I wish I knew—its so awkward, as I said—but I really think it's a gentleman!"
"Exactly—exactly so!" responded Quimby, somewhat dejectedly. And during the remainder of their walk he was very much harassed in his mind over this interest Nattie confessed in her new friend—"on the wire,"—who would appear as a tight-rope performer to his perturbed imagination. And he felt in his inmost heart that it would be a great relief to his mind if this mysterious per-
