ent unfurled umbrella
and the stout, elderly woman intent upon gaining, at cost of whatever
risk or struggle, her place and portion among the moist miscellany to
whom the dear old 'bus-- But perhaps I have lost the thread of my
sentence.

Ah, yes--that "stout, elderly woman"; so superabundant whether as a
type or as an individual; so prone--or "liable"--to impinge tyrannously
upon the consciousness of her fellow-traveller, and in no less a degree
upon that of the public servant, who, from his place aloft, guides, as
it is phrased, the destinies of the conveyance. It was, indeed, one of
the most notable of these--a humble friend of my own--who had the
fortune to make the acute, recorded, historic observation which, with
the hearty, pungent, cursory brevity and point of his class and
_metier_--the envy of the painstaking, voluminous analyst and artist of
our period-- But again I stray.

She was climbing up, or climbing down, perplexed equally, as I gather,
by the management of her _parapluie_ and of her--_enfin_, her
petticoats. The candid anxiety of her round, underdone face, as she so
wonderfully writhed to maintain the standard of pudicity dear--even
vital--to the matron of the British Isles appealed--vividly, though
mutely--to the forbearance that, seeing, would still seem _not_ to see,
her foot, her ankle, her _mollet_--as I early learned to say in Paris,
where, however, so exigent a modesty is scarcely ... well, scarcely.

"Madam," the gracious fellow said in effect, "_ne vous genez pas_." Then
he went on to assure her briefly that he was an elderly man; that he had
"held the ribbons," as they phrase it, for several years; that many
were the rainy days in London; that each of these placed numerous
women--elderly or younger--in the same involuntary predicament as that
from which she herself had suffered; and that so far as he personally
was concerned he had long since ceased to take any extreme delight in
the-- _Bref_, he was charming; he renewed my fading belief--fading, as I
had thought, disastrously but immitigably--in the capacity of the
Anglo-Saxon for _esprit_; and I am glad indeed to have taken a line or
so to record his _mot_.

_III.--As finally elucidated by Arnold Bennett._

Maria Wickwyre, of the Five Towns, emerged from muddy Bombazine Lane and
stood in the rain and wind at Pie Corner, eighty-four yards from the
door of St. Jude's chapel, in the Strand. She was in London! Yes, she
was on that spot