about; and, as likely as not,
it opens at the moment when she is holding it upside down. If you happen
to be near enough to look over her shoulder, you will notice that the
gold and silver lies loose within it. In an inner sanctuary, carefully
secured with a second secret spring, she keeps her coppers, together
with a postage-stamp and a draper's receipt, nine months old, for
elevenpence three-farthings.

I remember the indignation of an old Bus-conductor, once. Inside we were
nine women and two men. I sat next the door, and his remarks therefore
he addressed to me. It was certainly taking him some time to collect
the fares, but I think he would have got on better had he been less
bustling; he worried them, and made them nervous.

"Look at that," he said, drawing my attention to a poor lady opposite,
who was diving in the customary manner for her purse, "they sit on their
money, women do. Blest if you wouldn't think they was trying to 'atch
it."

At length the lady drew from underneath herself an exceedingly fat
purse.

"Fancy riding in a bumpby bus, perched up on that thing," he continued.
"Think what a stamina they must have." He grew confidential. "I've seen
one woman," he said, "pull out from underneath 'er a street doorkey, a
tin box of lozengers, a pencil-case, a whopping big purse, a packet
of hair-pins, and a smelling-bottle. Why, you or me would be wretched,
sitting on a plain door-knob, and them women goes about like that all
day. I suppose they gets used to it. Drop 'em on an eider-down pillow,
and they'd scream. The time it takes me to get tuppence out of them,
why, it's 'eart-breaking. First they tries one side, then they tries the
other. Then they gets up and shakes theirselves till the bus jerks them
back again, and there they are, a more 'opeless 'eap than ever. If I 'ad
my way I'd make every bus carry a female searcher as could over'aul
'em one at a time, and take the money from 'em. Talk about the poor
pickpocket. What I say is, that a man as finds his way into a woman's
pocket--well, he deserves what he gets."

But it was the thought of more serious matters that lured me into
reflections concerning the over-carefulness of women. It is a theory of
mine--wrong possibly; indeed I have so been informed--that we pick our
way through life with too much care. We are for ever looking down upon
the ground. Maybe, we do avoid a stumble or two over a stone or a brier,
but also we miss the blue of the sky,