hospital,
when Mrs. Tarbell accosted them.

Mrs. Tarbell stood in the established attitude of a woman in front of a
rainy-day gutter, holding her skirts with one hand and leaning forward
at such an angle that the drippings from the mid-rib of her umbrella
fell in equal streams upon the small of her back and a point precisely
thirteen inches from the tips of her galoshes.

"Bring her in here," cried Mrs, Tarbell, shaking her umbrella. "Bring
her in here." And she waved the umbrella in an elliptical curve about
her head.

"Where?" said the foremost of those addressed, an active-looking man
with a red moustache, a wet fur cap, and an umbrella under his arm.

"Here," said Mrs. Tarbell, thrusting her umbrella at the Land and Water
Company's building. To make her directions more accurate, she went to
the steps and nodded at the hall-way.

"The lady is my--has just been having a consultation with me," said Mrs.
Tarbell to the man in the red moustache, "and--"

"Which way?" said he.

"Right up-stairs: the first door at the head of the stairs, on the third
floor. I think you had better take her up in the elevator, because--"

"Cert'nly, cert'nly," he said, interrupting Mrs. Tarbell, who had
intended to be as brief and business-like as possible.

Mrs. Tarbell followed the procession into the elevator, and when they
arrived on the third floor, John, the office-boy, had already opened the
door, scenting an excitement afar off with curious nostril, as it were;
and Mrs. Stiles was duly carried in and laid on the sofa. "John, get
some water instantly," cried Mrs. Tarbell. And at the same moment a
red-cheeked young man bustled into the room and said that he was a
doctor.

He pushed everybody out of the way, darted to the sofa, took off his
hat. "Heard there was an accident, and if my services--unless there is
another practitioner--thank you, sir, you are doing the very best thing
possible; and now let us see whether there is a fracture," he said.

The promptitude and directness with which this young gentleman went to
work commanded the attention and admiration of all the spectators. He
asked for water, he called for salts of ammonia, he ran his hands
lightly over Mrs. Stiles's prostrate form, all in an instant; then he
asked how the accident had happened.

"She tried to get on while the car was going," growled the conductor,
who had accompanied the party up-stairs.

"I'll _bet_ she didn't," observed the party with the r