n
the streets and on the bridges.

They were most amiable multitudes, March thought, and they responded
docilely to the entreaties of the policemen who stood on the steps
of the bridges, and divided their encountering currents with patient
appeals of "Bitte schon! Bitte schon!" He laughed to think of a New York
cop saying "Please prettily! Please prettily!" to a New York crowd which
he wished to have go this way or that, and then he burned with shame to
think how far our manners were from civilization, wherever our heads and
hearts might be, when he heard a voice at his elbow:

"A punch with a club would start some of these fellows along quicker."

It was Stoller, and March turned from him to lose his disgust in the
sudden terror of perceiving that Miss Triscoe was no longer at his side.
Neither could he see his wife and General Triscoe, and he began to
push frantically about in the crowd looking for the girl. He had an
interminable five or ten minutes in his vain search, and he was going
to call out to her by name, when Burnamy saved him from the hopeless
absurdity by elbowing his way to him with Miss. Triscoe on his arm.

"Here she is, Mr. March," he said, as if there were nothing strange in
his having been there to find her; in fact he had followed them all
from the theatre, and at the moment he saw the party separated, and Miss
Triscoe carried off helpless in the human stream, had plunged in
and rescued her. Before March could formulate any question in his
bewilderment, Burnamy was gone again; the girl offered no explanation
for him, and March had not yet decided to ask any when he caught sight
of his wife and General Triscoe standing tiptoe in a doorway and craning
their necks upward and forward to scan the crowd in search of him and
his charge. Then he looked round at her and opened his lips to express
the astonishment that filled him, when he was aware of an ominous
shining of her eyes and trembling of her hand on his arm.

She pressed his arm nervously, and he understood her to beg him to
forbear at once all question of her and all comment on Burnamy's
presence to her father.

It would not have been just the time for either. Not only Mrs. March was
with the general, but Mrs. Adding also; she had called to them from that
place, where she was safe with Rose when she saw them eddying about in
the crowd. The general was still, expressing a gratitude which became
more pressing the more it was disclaimed; he sai