"Thank you! I—I never knew any one who understood me as well as you!" he said with a grateful bow, and without more words, Cyn left him.
"How long you have been gone!" Nattie remarked, looking up, her cheeks very red, and her nose embellished with a streak of smut, as Cyn entered. "Did you see any one?"
"No one except Quimby, who stopped me to ask about bringing a friend to call some evening," Cyn replied, displaying the fruit, and producing the soap-dish.
"Mercy on us!" Nattie said, looking rather aghast, "it is rather large, isn't it? and what did you bring that soap-dish for?"
"I thought it might come handy," laughed Cyn. We will make a potato holder of it for the time. 'To what base uses may we come at last?'—Why—"in a tone of surprise, "here is the Duchess!"
And sure enough, up by the window sat that sagacious animal, winking and blinking complacently, and evidently determined to be a third in the feast.
"She came in unnoticed under the shadow that fruit-dish threw," said Nattie, teasingly.
Cyn shook an oyster fork at her threateningly.
"Say another such word and you shall have no
