SOME ten days later, Reuben Tracy was vastly surprised one afternoon to receive a note from Miss Minster. The office-boy said that the messenger was waiting for an answer, and had been warned to hand the missive to no one except him. The note ran thus:
Dear Sir: I hope very much that you can find time to call here at our house during the afternoon. Pray ask for me, and do not mention to any one that you are coming.
It will not seem to you, I am sure, that I have taken a liberty either in my request or my injunction, after you have heard the explanation. Sincerely yours,
Kate Minster.
Reuben sent back a written line to say that he would come within an hour, and then tried to devote himself to the labor of finishing promptly the task he had in hand. It was a very simple piece of conveyancing—work he generally performed with facility—but to-day he found himself spoiling sheet after sheet of “legal cap,” by stupid omissions and unconscious inversions of the quaint legal phraseology. His thoughts would not be enticed away from the subject of the note—the perfume of which was apparent upon the musty air of the office, even as it lay in its envelope before him. There was nothing remarkable in the fact that Miss Minster wanted to see him—of course, it was with reference to Jessica’s plan for the factory-girls—but the admonition to secrecy puzzled him a good deal. The word “explanation,” too, had a portentous look. What could it mean?
Mrs. Minster had been closeted in the library with her lawyer, Mr. Horace Boyce, for fully two hours that forenoon, and afterward, in the hearing of her daughters, had invited him to stay for luncheon. He had pleaded pressure of business as an excuse for not accepting the invitation, and had taken a hurried departure forthwith.
The two girls exchanged glances at all this. Mr. Boyce had never been asked before to the family table, and there was something pre-occupied, almost brusque, in his manner of declining the exceptional honor and hurrying off as he did. They noted, too, that their mother seemed unwontedly excited about something, and experience told them that her calm Knickerbocker nature was not to be stirred by trivial matters.
So, while they lingered over the jellied dainties of the light noonday meal, Kate made bold to put the question:
“Something is worrying you, mamma,” she said. “Is it anything that we know about?”