a big, white straw hat, and--a girl--the most amazingly
pretty girl he had ever laid eyes on. After him, headlong, like a
distracted chicken, rushed Smith and alighted beside him, panting,
menacing.

"Wha'--dyeh--board--this--car--for!" he gasped, sliding fiercely up
beside Brown. "Get off or I'll drag you off!"

But Brown only shook his head with an infatuated smile.

"Is it that girl?" said Smith, incensed. "Are you a--a Broadway Don Juan,
or are you a respectable lawyer with a glimmering sense of common decency
and an intention to keep a social engagement at the Carringtons' to-day?"

And Smith drew out his timepiece and flourished it furiously under
Brown's handsome and sun-tanned nose.

But Brown only slid along the seat away from him, saying:

"Don't bother me, Jim; this is too momentous a crisis in my life to have
a well-intentioned but intellectually dwarfed friend butting into me and
running about under foot."

"Intellectually d-d--do you mean _me?_" asked Smith, unable to believe
his ears. "_Do_ you?"

"Yes, I do! Because a miracle suddenly happens to me on Forty-second
Street, and you, with your mind of a stockbroker, unable to appreciate
it, come clattering and clamoring after me about a house party--a common-
place, every-day, social appointment, when I have a full-blown miracle on
my hands!"

"What miracle?" faltered Smith, stupefied.

"What miracle? Haven't I been telling you that I've been having that
queer sense that all this has happened before? Didn't I suddenly begin--
as though compelled by some unseen power--to foretell things? Didn't I
prophesy the coming of this cross-town car? Didn't I even name its color
before it came into sight? Didn't I warn you that I'd probably get into
it? Didn't I reveal to you that a big straw hat and a pretty summer
gown----"

"Confound it!" almost shouted Smith, "There are about five thousand
cherry-colored cross-town cars in this town. There are about five million
white hats and dresses in this borough. There are five billion girls
wearing 'em----!" "Yes; but the _wicker basket_" breathed Brown. "How do
you account for _that?_... And, anyway, you annoy me, Smith. Why don't
you get out of the car and go somewhere?"

"I want to know where you are going before I knock your head off."

"I don't know," replied Brown, serenely.

"Are you actually attempting to follow that girl?" whispered Smith,
horrified.

"Yes.... It sounds low, doesn't it? But it rea