It was very near tea-time, and darkness had established itself for the night in the offices, before Reuben’s vagrant musings prompted him to action. Upon the spur of the moment, he all at once put down his feet, lighted the gas over his desk, took out the perfumed letter from its consecrated resting-place, and began hurriedly to write a reply to it. He had suddenly realized that the memorable interview that afternoon had been, from her point of view, inconclusive. Five times he worked his way down nearly to the bottom of the page, and then tore up the sheet. At first he was too expansive; then the contrasted fault of over-reticence jarred upon him. At last he constructed this letter, which obtained a reluctant approval from his critical sense, though it seemed to his heart a pitifully gagged and blindfolded missive: Dear Miss Minster: Unfortunately, I was unable this afternoon to see my way to helping you upon the lines which you suggested. I am afraid that this disappointed you. Matters have assumed a somewhat different aspect since our talk. By the time that you have mastered the details of what you had on your mind, I may be in a position to consult with you freely upon the whole subject. I want you to believe that I am very anxious to be of assistance to you, in this as in all other things. Faithfully yours, Reuben TRacy. Reuben locked up the keepsake note again, fondly entertaining the idea as he did so that soon there might be others to bear it company. Then he closed the offices, went down upon the street, and told the first idle boy he met that he could earn fifty cents by carrying a letter at once to the home of the Minsters. The money would be his when he returned to the Dearborn House. “Will there be any answer?” asked the boy. This opened up a new idea to the lawyer. “You might wait and see,” he said. But the messenger came back in a depressingly short space of time, with the word that no answer was required. He had hurried both ways with a stem concentration of purpose, and now he dashed off once more in an even more strenuous face against time with the half-dollar clutched securely inside his mitten. The Great Occidental Minstrel Combination was in town, and the boy leaped over snowbanks, and slid furiously across slippery places, in the earnestness of his intention not to miss one single joke. The big man whom he left went wearily up the stairs to his room, and walked therein for aimless hours, and almost scowled as he shook his head at the waitress who came up to remind him that he had had no supper. ***** The two Minster sisters had read Reuben’s note together, in the seclusion of their own sitting-room. They had previously discussed the fact of his refusal to assist them--for so it translated itself in Kate’s account of the interview--and had viewed it with almost displeasure. Ethel was, however, disposed to relent when the letter came.