ould not offer an affront to a young,
defenseless girl who--" The rest eluded her; she could not recall it,
try as she would. In desperate resolve to do her duty anyway, she tilted
back her umbrella, whereat a fine stream of water poured from the tip
directly over her upturned face, and trickled cheerily down the bridge
of her short nose.

"Sir--" she shouted resolutely, and then she stopped, for, plainly, her
oration was, in the premises, a misfit--the person beside her--the one
of the mortal effrontery and immortal grip, being a--woman. A woman of
masculine proportions, towering, deep-chested, large-limbed, but with a
face which belied all these, for in it her sex shone forth in a
motherliness unmistakable, as if the world at large were her family, and
it was her business to see that it was generously provided for, along
the pleasantest possible lines for all concerned.

"What car?" the woman trumpeted, gazing down serenely into Claire's
little wet, anxious, upturned face at her elbow.

"Columbus Avenue."

The stranger nodded, peering down the glistening, wet way, as if she
were a skipper sighting a ship.

"My car, too! First's Lexin'ton--next Broadway--then--here's ours!"
Again that derrick-grip, and they stood in the heart of the maelstrom,
but apparently perfectly safe, unassailable.

"They won't stop," Claire wailed plaintively. "I've been waiting for
ages. The car'll go by! You see if it won't!"

It did, indeed, seem on the point of sliding past, as all the rest had
done, but of a sudden the motorman vehemently shut off his power, and
put on his brake. By some hidden, mysterious force that was in her, or
the mere commanding dimensions of her frame, Claire's companion had
brought him to a halt.

She lifted her charge gently up on to the step, pausing herself, before
she should mount the platform, to close the girl's umbrella.

"Step lively! Step lively!" the conductor urged insistently, reaching
for his signal-strap.

The retort came calmly, deliberately, but with perfect good nature. "Not
on your life, young man. I been steppin' lively all day, an' for so
long's it's goin' to take this car to get to One-hundred-an'-sixteenth
Street, my time ain't worth no more'n a settin' hen's."

The conductor grinned in spite of himself. "Well, mine _is_," he
declared, while with an authoritative finger he indicated the box into
which Claire was to drop her fare.

"So all the other roosters think," the woman let