elder woman. She reached for her
hand bag. "I think I've got a penny here for the cup."

"I've plenty of pennies," said Miss Smith.

At the cooler behind the forward door she filled a paper cup and brought
it back to where the two were. To her surprise the elder woman reached
for the cup and took it from her and held it to the girl's lips while
she drank. With a profound shock of sympathy the realization went
through Miss Smith that the girl had not the use of her hands.

Having drunk, the girl settled back in her former posture, her face half
turned toward the window and her head drooping as if from weariness. The
woman laid the emptied cup aside and at once was dozing off again. The
third member of the group sat in pitying wonder. She wondered what
affliction had made a cripple of this wholesome-looking bonny creature.
She thought of ghastly things she had read concerning the dreadful after
effects of infantile paralysis, but rejected the suggestion, because no
matter what else of dread and woe the girl's eyes had betrayed the face
was too plump and the body, which she could feel touching hers, too firm
and well nourished to betoken a present and wasting infirmity. So then
it must have been some accident--some maiming mishap which probably had
not been of recent occurrence, since nothing else about the girl
suggested physical impairment. If this deduction were correct, the
wearing of the shrouding blue cape in an atmosphere almost stiflingly
close stood explained. It was so worn to hide the injured limbs from
view. That, of course, would be the plausible explanation. Yet at the
same time an inner consciousness gave Miss Smith a certain and absolute
conviction that the specter of tearfulness lurking at the back of those
big brown eyes meant more than the ever-present realization of some
bodily disfigurement.

Fascinated, she found her eyes searching the shape beside her for a clew
to the answer of this lamentable mystery. In her covert scrutiny there
was no morbid desire to spy upon another's hidden miseries--our Miss
Smith was too well-bred for that--only was there a sudden quickened
pity and with that pity a yearning to offer, if opportunity served, any
small comfort of act or word which might fitly come her way. As her
glance--behind the cover of her reopened book--traveled over the cloaked
shape searching for a clew to the secret she saw how that chance
promised to serve her ends. The girl was half turned from