REUBEN MINOR was in his own room in his shirt sleeves, and the sleeves rolled to his elbows. His paste pot was on the table, sheets of paper and scraps of pasteboard were on the floor, and Reuben, with a queer-shaped box before him, was in what Maria called “a brown study.”

The stair door opened, and his Aunt Mary’s voice called, “Reuben!”

“Yes’m.”

“Don’t you forget those errands that you’ve got to do in town. Have you got ’em all in your mind?”

“Yes’m.”

“There’s only the eggs and the kerosene and the vinegar, you know, so you won’t need to have ’em written down—just three things.”

“All right.”

Silence for a few minutes, during which Reuben turned the box endwise and squinted at it. “Let’s see,” he said, leaning his elbow on the table and his head on his hand, “I wonder how that would do?” Then he started for his row of shelves, seized upon a good-sized book in the corner, and dived into its pages. Something was not clear. The stair door opened again, and his aunt’s voice sounded: “Reuben!”

“Yes’m.”

“You must take that next car, you know, because there isn’t another for an hour, and I’m in a hurry for the eggs; if I don’t have them by noon there’ll be no pumpkin pie for Sunday. Are you all ready for the car?”

“I will be in a minute, Aunt Mary.”

“Well, you better get ready right straight off, then there won’t be any mistake; it will be along now in a little while.”

There was no reply to this, and the door closed again, Reuben, meantime, deep in his book. Ten minutes, fifteen minutes, then a sudden, sharp call from below: “Reuben, there’s the car coming. Hurry, now! don’t you miss it for anything.”

Reuben hurried. He made a frantic dash for his coat, ran his fingers through his hair by way of combing, concluded to go without a necktie, and tore down the stairs and out of the kitchen door and across the lawn, to the tune of his aunt’s words: “I believe in my heart you’ll lose that car, after all!”

No, he didn’t. He hailed it, panting and breathless, some minutes after it had passed the corner, and at last was seated in it, mopping his wet forehead, for the morning was warm. But he had not forgotten the big book. Four miles in a street car, with not many passengers at that hour, gave him a good chance to study up that puzzling portion which he could not get through his mind. So he studied and puzzled, and the car rumbled on, and stopped, and went on again many times, and people came in and went out, and Reuben knew nothing about them. At last he looked up; he believed he could make that box now, partitions and all, if he were only at home. Halloo! they were in town already, and were passing Porter’s. Why! then they must have passed the corner grocery where Aunt Mary always traded. What a nuisance! Now perhaps he could not get this car on its return trip. He must try for it. So he pulled the check, and made what speed he could back, three, four, five blocks, to the corner grocery. As he left the car he wondered how they managed the flap that made the fastening of the inner box, and still puzzling over it, presented himself at the counter of the city grocery.

“Well, sir,” said the clerk, after waiting a minute for orders, “what can I do for you?”

What indeed? Reuben stared at him, grew red in the face, stammered, mopped his face with his handkerchief, gazed up and down the rows and rows of crowded shelves, gazed about him everywhere. What had he come for? That was the awful question. What had Aunt Mary said? She had said several things, he remembered. He tried to recall the all-important one. Butter? No, of course not; they made their own butter. Flour, perhaps, or starch—women were always wanting flour and starch—or it might have been tea. He was sure he did not know, and the longer he thought the more confused he seemed to get. And there was the return car! Unless he took that he would have to wait a solid hour, and for what? Was there any likelihood that he would remember? Reuben asked himself that question in a most searching manner, then sorrowfully shook his head as he owned to himself that he did not believe he ever knew; he had not paid any attention to that part of the business.

Aunt Mary was watching for the return car. “Reuben has come,” she called out to Maria in the kitchen, as she caught a glimpse of him. “I must say I am relieved; I don’t know how we could have managed without those eggs. If I ever get hold of any hens that lay again, I’ll venture to say I won’t sell all my eggs to my neighbors and have to depend on store ones for myself. Why, what in the world has the boy done with them? He seems to be empty-handed! Hurry up, Reuben, we are waiting for the eggs. Where are your things?”

Poor red-faced, shamefaced Reuben! It was hard work, but there was nothing for it but to own that the first he had heard of eggs was at that moment; and as for the “things,” he had no more idea than the man in the moon what they were.

“I believe that boy is half-witted,” the clerk at the corner grocery had said, after watching him for a few minutes, and seeing him make a dash for the return car, not having bought a thing. But bless your heart, he wasn’t. He had wits enough. “Too many of ’em,” his Aunt Mary said. The trouble with Reuben was that he had never learned to withdraw his thoughts from the thing which wanted to absorb them, and fix them for the time being, instead, on the thing which ought to claim his attention.

Myra Spafford.