Mr. Ollerenshaw sat
down on the nearest bench; he was waiting for an opponent, the captain
of the bowling-club. It is exactly at the instant of his downsitting
that the drama about to be unfolded properly begins. Strolling along
from the northern extremity of the terrace to the southern was a young
woman. This young woman, as could be judged from her free and
independent carriage, was such a creature as, having once resolved to do
a thing, is not to be deterred from doing it by the caprices of other
people. She had resolved--a resolution of no importance whatever--to
seat herself on precisely the southernmost bench of the terrace. There
was not, indeed, any particular reason why she should have chosen the
southernmost bench; but she had chosen it. She had chosen it, afar off,
while it was yet empty and Mr. Ollerenshaw was on his feet. When Mr.
Ollerenshaw dropped into a corner of it the girl's first instinctive
volition was to stop, earlier than she had intended, at one of the other
seats.

Despite statements to the contrary, man is so little like a sheep that
when he has a choice of benches in a park he will always select an empty
one. This rule is universal in England and Scotland, though elsewhere
exceptions to it have been known to occur. But the girl, being a girl,
and being a girl who earned her own living, and being a girl who brought
all conventions to the bar of her reason and forced them to stand trial
there, said to herself, proudly and coldly: "It would be absurd on my
part to change my mind. I meant to occupy that bench, and why should I
not? There is amply sufficient space for the man and me too. He has
taken one corner, and I will take the other. These notions that girls
have are silly." She meant the notion that she herself had had.

So she floated forward, charmingly and inexorably. She was what in the
Five Towns is called "a stylish piece of goods." She wore a
black-and-white frock, of a small check pattern, with a black belt and
long black gloves, and she held over her serenity a black parasol richly
flounced with black lace--a toilet unusual in the district, and as
effective as it was unusual. She knew how to carry it. She was a tall
girl, and generously formed, with a complexion between fair and dark;
her age, perhaps, about twenty-five. She had the eye of an empress--and
not an empress-consort either, nor an empress who trembles in secret at
the rumour of cabals and intrigues. Yes, considered as