Page:Wired Love (Thayer 1880).djvu/34

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At the Hotel Norman.
27

one lingering remnant, that would never allow her to hang in the window one of those cheaply conspicuous placards, announcing:

"Rooms to Let."

Miss Betsey Kling was a spinster—not because she liked it, but on account of circumstances over which she had no control,—and her principal object in life, outside of the never-expressed, but much thought-of one of finding her other self, like her, astray, was to keep watch and ward over the affairs of the occupants of neighboring flats, and see that they conducted themselves with the propriety becoming the neighbors of so very genteel and unexceptionable a person as Miss Betsey Kling. In pursuit of this occupation she was addicted to sudden and silent appearances, much after the manner of materialized spirits, at windows opening into the hall, and doors carelessly left ajar. She was, however, afflicted with a chronic cold, that somewhat interfered with her ability to become a first-class listener, on account of its producing an incessant sniffle and spasms of violent sneezing.

Miss Rogers going home to that back room of hers, found herself still pondering upon the probable sex of "C." Rather to her own chagrin, when she caught her thoughts thus straying, too; for she had a