face, there was no pleasure to be found
in watching the people in the streets below. Carriages were huddled
up in line upon the stands and the coachmen shivered miserably on
their seats, the rain dripping in steady drops from the brims of their
hats into the laps of their mackintoshes. So she kept her head down,
and when she heard footsteps mounting the stairway, approaching her,
she held out the three coppers for her fare without looking up. When
her mind, anticipating the answering ring of the conductor's
ticket-puncher, realized the mistake, she raised her head, then
twisted back, electrically, as though some current had been passed
through her body. Seated on the bench at the other side of the
passage-way, was the man whom she had found in King Street outside
the premises of Bonsfield & Co.

Her first thought was to get off the 'bus. She made a preparatory
movement, leaning forward with her hand upon the back of the seat
in front of her. Possibly the man saw it and had no desire to be foiled
a second time. Whatever may have been his purpose, he moved nearer
to her and held out the umbrella with which he was sheltering himself.

"You'd better let me lend you an umbrella--hadn't you?" he said.

There is a quality of voice that commands. It neither considers nor
admits of refusal. He had it. Women of strong personality it
irritates; women with no personality it affrights; but the women who
are women obey--with reluctance probably, struggling against it, but
in the end they obey. There is, again, a quality of voice that
hall-marks the man of birth. Long years of careful preservation of
the breed have refined it down. It may cloak a mind that is vicious
to a thought; but there is a ring in it--a ring of true metal, well
tried in the furnace. He had that also. From him, dressed none too
carefully, it sounded almost misplaced and therefore was the more
noticeable. The effect of it upon her was obvious. Instead of taking
his suggestion as an insult, which undoubtedly she would have done
had the offer been made in any other type of voice, Sally checked
the offended toss of the head, restrained the contemptuous flash of
eye, and merely said, "No, thank you." She said it coldly. There was
no warmth of encouragement, either in her tone of voice or the
unrecognizing eye which she turned upon him without trace of
sympathy.

"Isn't that rather foolish?" he suggested. "You'll get wet through.
How far are you going?"

"Hamme