er,
that they began to look at me as though I was not quite right in my
mind. The maids grabbed the children if they started to come near me,
and the children stared at me with big round eyes, as though they'd
been told I was an ogre who might eat them.

I was hungry enough to. The little fruit-stand at the entrance had a
fascination for me. I found myself there time and again, till I got
afraid I might actually try to get of with a peach or a bunch of
grapes. That thought haunted me. Fancy Nance Olden starved and
blundering into the cheapest and most easily detected species of
thieving!

I suppose great generals in their hour of defeat imagine themselves
doing the feeblest, foolishest things. As I sat there on the bench,
gazing before me, I saw the whole thing--Nancy Olden, after all her
bragging, her skirmishing, her hairbreadth scapes and successes,
arrested in broad daylight and before witnesses for having stolen a
cool, wet bunch of grapes, worth a nickel, for her hot, dry, hungering
throat! I saw the policeman that'd do it; he looked like that Sergeant
Mulhill I met 'way, 'way back in Latimer's garden. I saw the officer
that'd receive me; he had blue eyes like the detective that came for me
to the Manhattan. I saw the woman jailer--oh, she was the A.D., all
right, who'd receive me without the slightest emotion, show me to a
cell and lock the door, as calm, as little triumphant or affected, as
though I hadn't once outwitted that cleverest of creatures--and
outwitted myself in forestalling her. I saw--

Mag, guess what I saw! No, truly; what I really saw? It made me jump
to my feet and grab it with a squeal.

I saw my own purse lying on the gravel almost at my feet, near the
little fruit-stand that had tempted me.

Blank empty it was, stripped clean, not a penny left in it, not a
paper, not a stamp, not even my key. Just the same I was glad to have
it. It linked me in a way to the place. The clever little girl that
had stolen it had been here in this park, on this very spot. The
thought of that cute young Nance Olden distracted my mind a minute from
my worry--and, oh, Maggie darlin', I was worrying so!

I walked up to the fruit-stand with the purse in my hand. The old
fellow who kept it looked up with an inviting smile. Lord knows, he
needn't have encouraged me to buy if I'd had a penny.

"I want to ask you," I said, "if you remember selling a lot of good
things to a little girl who had a