“3.  While you pay me a price for my labor and for my skill as an expert, do you compensate me for the trials you put upon my probity?  You pay me for what I do, but do you reward me for what I might, but do not do?  Is what I do not do a marketable quantity?  I think that it is.  To prove it, inquire of those whose servants have behaved ill, whether they would not have paid something to have forestalled their dishonesty.

“There is a bad strain to this paragraph, and I will not dwell upon it.  I only ask you to remember that enormous sums of money pass through my hands every day, and that the smallest slip of my memory, or of my care, or of my fidelity, might cause you irreparable loss.  Familiarity with money and operations in money always tend to lessen the respect for the regard that others hold it in.  To resist the subtle influences of this familiarity involves a certain wear and tear of those principles which must be kept intact for your sake.

“I beg you to accept what is my evident meaning, even if my method of setting it forth has not been particularly happy.  I have assured myself that my claim is a valid one, and I await your obliging reply with anxiety.

    “I remain, very respectfully, “Your obedient servant,

    “——­FIELDS, Paying Teller."

At the end the president suddenly lowered his head with a smile, and looked over the top of his glasses at his audience, clearly meaning, “There’s a letter for you!”

But two of the gentlemen were fast asleep, nodding gently at one another across the table, while their hands clasped the arms of their chairs.  The other one was looking up toward the roofs of the buildings opposite, absorbed in speculation.

The president said, aloud: 

“I think, as long as Fields has made such a touse about it, that I’d better draft a reply, and not give him a verbal an—­”

“Draft!” said the speculator, brought to life by the word.  “Draft did you say, sir?  What?—­On whom?—­”

“I said ‘draft a reply’ to—­to this,” returned the other, waving the letter.

“Oh, a reply!  Draft one.  Draft a reply—­a reply to the letter about the salary.  Oh, certainly, by all means.”

“And read it to the directors at the meeting next Friday,” suggested the president.

The speculator’s eyes turned vacantly upon him, and it was full half a minute before he comprehended.  “Yes, yes, of course, read it to the directors next Friday.  They’ll approve it, you know.  That will be regular, and according to rule.  But about Steinmeyer, you know.  When a man like Steinmeyer does such a thing as—­but just come to the window a minute.”

He led the president off by the arm, and that was the last of Fields’s letter for that day.

* * * * *