ery hard to prevent the
back wheels from slipping down with a bump on to the pavement and
shaking the old gentleman horribly. Coming in, they risked
overturning him altogether.

You would not have known that there was any struggle going on. The
old gentleman bore himself with so calm and high a heroism; the
little ladies were sustained by so pure a sense of the humors of the
bath-chair. No sharp, irritating cries escaped them. They did
nothing but laugh softly as they pulled and pushed and tugged with
their women's arms, and heaved with delicate shoulders, or hung on,
in their frenzy, from behind while the bath-chair swayed ponderously
and perilously above the footway.

Gibson sometimes wondered whether he oughtn't to rush out and help
them. But he couldn't. He didn't really care.

His landlady told him that the old gentleman was a General
Richardson, that he was paralyzed, that his daughters waited on him
hand and foot, that they were too poor to afford a man-servant to
look after him and push the bath-chair. It wasn't much of a life,
the woman said, for the two young ladies. Gibson agreed that it
wasn't much of a life, certainly.

What pleased him was the fine levity with which they took it. He was
always meeting them in their walks on the esplanade. Sometimes they
would come racing down the wind with the bath-chair, their serge
skirts blown forward, their hair curling over the brims of their
sailor hats. (The dark one was particularly attractive in a high
wind.) Then they would come back much impeded, their skirts wrapped
tight above their knees, their little bodies bent to the storm,
their faces wearing still that invincible gaiety of theirs.
Sometimes, on a gentle incline, they would let the bath-chair run on
a little by itself, till it threatened a dangerous independence,
when they would fly after it at the top of their speed and arrest it
just in time. Gibson could never make out whether they did this for
their own amusement or the old gentleman's. But sometimes, when the
General came careering past him, he could catch the glance of a
bright and affable eye that seemed to call on him to observe the
extent to which an old fellow might enjoy himself yet.

Gibson's lodging gave him endless opportunity for studying the
habits of his little ladies. He learned that they did everything in
turns. They took it in turns to pull the bath-chair and to push it.
They took it in turns to read aloud to the old gentleman,