little old lady, and she had a quaint cast in her left eye that gave
her the oddest, most sporting look. The cast was working overtime as
she gazed at the gowns, and the ridiculous old sprigs on her rusty black
bonnet trembled with her silent mirth. She looked like one of those
clever, epigrammatic, dowdy old duchesses that one reads about in
English novels. I'm sure she had cardamon seeds in her shabby bag, and
a carriage with a crest on it waiting for her just around the corner. I
ached to slip my hand through her arm and ask her what she thought of
it all. I know that her reply would have been exquisitely witty and
audacious, and I did so long to hear her say it.

No doubt some good angel tugs at my common sense, restraining me from
doing these things that I am tempted to do. Of course it would be
madness for a woman to address unknown red-headed men with the look of
an engineer about them and a book of Dickens in their hands; or perky
old women with nutcracker faces; or girls with wide humorous mouths. Oh,
it couldn't be done, I suppose. They would clap me in a padded cell in
no time if I were to say:

"Mister Red-headed Man, I'm so glad your heart is young enough for
Dickens. I love him too--enough to read him standing at a book counter
in a busy shop. And do you know, I like the squareness of your jaw, and
the way your eyes crinkle up when you laugh; and as for your being an
engineer--why one of the very first men I ever loved was the engineer in
'Soldiers of Fortune.'"

I wonder what the girl in the car would have said if I had crossed over
to her, and put my hand on her arm and spoken, thus:

"Girl with the wide, humorous mouth, and the tragic eyes, and the hole
in your shoe, I think you must be an awfully good sort. I'll wager you
paint, or write, or act, or do something clever like that for a living.
But from that hole in your shoe which you have inked so carefully,
although it persists in showing white at the seams, I fancy you are
stumbling over a rather stony bit of Life's road just now. And from
the look in your eyes, girl, I'm afraid the stones have cut and bruised
rather cruelly. But when I look at your smiling, humorous mouth I know
that you are trying to laugh at the hurts. I think that this morning,
when you inked your shoe for the dozenth time, you hesitated between
tears and laughter, and the laugh won, thank God! Please keep right
on laughing, and don't you dare stop for a minute! Because pretty