carried her parcels in her
arms.

Directly they were seated in the car Eunice gave Maria a violent
nudge with her sharp elbow. "He's on this car," she whispered in her
ear, with a long hiss which seemed to penetrate the girl's brain.

Maria made an impatient movement.

"Don't you think you ought to just step over and thank him?"
whispered Eunice. "I'll hold your bundles. He's on the other side, a
seat farther back. He raised his hat to me."

"Hush! I can't here."

"Well, all right, but I thought it would look sort of polite," said
Eunice. Then she subsided. Once in a while she glanced back at George
Ramsey, then uneasily at her niece, but she said nothing more.

The car was crowded. Workmen smelling of leather clung to the straps.
One, in the aisle next Maria, who sat on the outside this time,
leaned fairly against her. He was a good-looking young fellow, but he
had a heavy jaw. He held an unlighted pipe in his mouth, and carried
a two-story tin dinner-pail. Maria kept shrinking closer to her aunt,
but the young man pressed against her all the more heavily. His eyes
were fixed with seeming unconsciousness ahead, but a furtive smile
lurked around his mouth.

George Ramsey was watching. All at once he arose and quietly and
unobtrusively came forward, insinuated himself with a gentle force
between Maria and the workman, and spoke to her. The workman muttered
something under his breath, but moved aside. He gave an ugly glance
at George, who did not seem to see him at all. Presently he sat down
in George's vacated seat beside another man, who said something to
him with a coarse chuckle. The man growled in response, and continued
to scowl furtively at George, who stood talking to Maria. He said
something about the fineness of the day, and Maria responded rather
gratefully. She was conscious of an inward tumult which alarmed her,
and made her defiant both at the young man and herself, but she could
not help responding to the sense of protection which she got from his
presence. She had not been accustomed to anything like the rudeness
of the young workman. In New Jersey caste was more clearly defined.
Here it was not defined at all. An employe in a shoe-factory had not
the slightest conception that he was not the social equal of a
school-teacher, and indeed in many cases he was. There were by no
means all like this one, whose mere masculine estate filled him with
entire self-confidence where women were concerned. In a