Bill Schwartz had a trumpet-like Prussian voice. The situation seemed to him to contain the elements of humour. He laughed boisterously. Heinie Schultz, more politic, tittered softly, shears against mouth. Pinkie Potter laughed convulsively, and beat out an intricate rag-time tattoo on his bootblack's stand with his brush. 4 It was Mr Boice's fixed habit to go on, toward noon, to the post-office. Instead, to-day, he returned to the _Voice_ office. He seated himself at his desk for a quarter of an hour, doing nothing. He had the faculty of sitting still, ruminating. Finally he reached out for the two-foot rule that always lay on his desk, and carefully measured a certain article in last week's paper. Then did a little figuring. He rose, moved toward the door; turned, and remarked to the wondering Humphrey:-- 'Take fifteen inches off Henry's string this week, Weaver. A dollar 'n' five cents. Be at the post-office if anybody wants me.' And went out. Humphrey himself measured Henry's article on the musicale. Old Boice had been accurate enough; it came to an even fifteen inches. Which at seven cents an inch, would be a dollar and five cents. When Henry reappeared and together they set out for Lower Chestnut Avenue, Humphrey found he hadn't the heart to break this fresh disappointment to his friend. He decided to let it drift until the Saturday. Something might turn up. Henry's mood had changed. He had left the office, an hour earlier, looking like a discouraged boy. Now he was serious, silent, hard to talk to. He seemed three years older. With certain of Henry's rather violently contrasted phases Humphrey was familiar; but he had never seen him look quite like this. Henry was strung up. Plainly. He walked very fast, striding intently forward. At least once in each block he found himself a yard ahead of his companion, checked himself, muttered a few words that sounded vaguely like an apology and then repeated the process. At Mrs Henderson's Henry was grave and curiously attractive. He had charm, no doubt of it--a sort of charm that women, older women, felt. Mildred Henderson distinctly played up to him. And Corinne, Humphrey noted, watched him now and then; the quietly observant keenness in her big dark eyes masked by her easy, lazy smile. Toward the close of luncheon Henry's evident inner tension showed signs of taking the form of gaiety. He acted like a young man wholly sure of himself. Humphrey's net impression, after more than a year and a half of close association with the boy, was that he couldn't ever be sure of himself. Not for one minute. Yet, when they threw down their napkins and pushed back their chairs, it was Henry who said, with an apparently easy arrogance back of his grain:-- 'Hump, you've got to be going back so soon, we're going to give you and Mildred the living-room. We'll wash the dishes.'