It is doubtful whether to this day Mr. Rattray fully understands his rejection, it was done so deftly, so frankly, yet with such a delicate consideration for his feelings. He took it, he assured himself afterward, without winking; but it is unlikely that he felt sufficiently indebted to the manner of its administration, in congratulating himself upon this point. It may be, too, that he left Miss Bell with the impression that her intention never to marry was not an immovable one, given indefinite time and indefinite abstention, on his part, from alluding to the subject. Certainly he found himself surprisingly little cast down by the event, and more resolved than ever to make the editor-in-chief admit that Elfrida's contributions were "the brightest things in the paper," and act accordingly. He realized, in the course of time, that he had never been very confident of any other answer; but nothing is more certain than that it acted as a curious stimulus to his interest in Elfrida's work. He found a co-enthusiast in Golightly Ticke, and on more than one occasion they agreed that something, must be done to bring Miss Bell before the public, to put within her reach the opportunity of the success she deserved, which was of the order Mr. Rattray described as "screaming." "So far as the booming is concerned," said Mr. Rattray to Mr. Ticke, "I will attend to that; but there must be something to boom. We can't sound the loud tocsin on a lot of our own paras. She must do something that will go between two covers." The men were talking in Golightly's room over easeful Sunday afternoon cigars; and as Rattray spoke they heard a light step mount the stairs. "There she is now," replied Ticke. "Suppose we go up and propose it to her?" "I wish I knew what to suggest," Rattray returned; "but we might talk it over with her--when she's had time to take off her bonnet." Ten minutes later Elfrida was laughing at their ambitions. "A success?" she exclaimed. "Oh yes! I mean to have a success--one day! But not yet--oh no! First I must learn to write a line decently, then a paragraph, then a page. I must wait, oh, a very long time--ten years perhaps. Five, anyway." "Oh, if you do that," protested Golightly Ticke, "it will be like decanted champagne. A success at nineteen--" "Twenty-one," corrected Elfrida. "Twenty-one if you like--is a sparkling success. A success at thirty-one is--well, it lacks the accompaniments." "You are a great deal too exacting, Miss Bell," Rattray put in; "those things you do for us are charming, you know they are." "You are very good to say so. I'm afraid they're only frivolous scraps."