Page:Wired Love (Thayer 1880).djvu/194

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Crosses on the Line.
187

pride in her lodger, and by her behavior created the impression in the minds of people sitting near, that she was the singer's mother.

And Jo—unsentimental Jo—was entirely carried away. With the music, of course, for music was art, and art, only in another branch, was his life and work; and was not Cyn a beautiful work of Nature, the mother of all art?

"He will be a very lucky man who shall call our Cyn his," whispered Clem to Jo, as she came out in answer to an encore.

"What!" ejaculated Jo, so savagely that every one turned to look at him, and Clem opened his eyes wide with surprise. "Bah! Nonsense!"

And some way or other, after this, the music sounded very dismal to Jo, and the close air of the room made his head ache; but he had been working very hard all day, and was tired, so this was quite natural.

Was Clem presuming on his good looks, and thinking of making Cyn his, he wondered? If he was, she certainly would not be fool enough to—Jo stopped here in his meditations, because he would like to have been a little surer that she would not. Very strongly he felt just then that "things of a doubtful nature were sometimes very uncertain!"

It was, of course, no sentiment on his part