s long as a baby's hand--and holding out his own
said, in his most courtly manner:

"Be very careful now, my dear: put your foot on mine; so! now give me
your hand and jump. There--that's it." To see Peter help a lady across
a muddy street, Holker Morris always said, was a lesson in all the finer
virtues. Sir Walter was a bungler beside him. But then Miss Felicia
could also have passed muster as the gay gallant's companion.

And just here the Scribe remarks, parenthetically, that there is nothing
that shows a woman's refinement more clearly than the way she crosses a
street.

Miss Felicia, for instance, would no more have soiled the toes of her
shoes in a puddle than a milk-white pussy would have dampened its feet
in the splash of an overturned bowl: a calm survey up and down; a taking
in of the dry and wet spots; a careful gathering up of her skirts,
and over skimmed the slender, willowy old lady with a one--two--and
three--followed by a stamp of her absurd feet and the shaking out of
ruffle and pleat. When a woman strides through mud without a shiver
because she has plenty of dry shoes and good ones at home, there are
other parts of her make-up, inside and out, that may want a looking
after.

Miss Felicia safely landed on the dry and comparatively clean sidewalk,
Peter put the question he had been framing in his mind since he first
caught sight of that lady picking her way among the puddles.

"Well, how is he now?"

"His head, or his heart?" she asked with a knowing smile, dropping her
still spotless skirts. "Both are broken; the last into smithereens. It
is hopeless. He will never be any better. Oh, Peter, what a mess you
have made of things!"

"What have I done?" he laughed.

"Got these two people dead in love with each other,--both of them--Ruth
is just as bad--and no more chance of their ever being married than you
or I. Perfectly silly, Peter, and I have always told you so--and now you
will have to take the consequences."

"Beautiful--beautiful!" chuckled Peter; "everything is coming my way. I
was sure of Jack, for he told me so, but Ruth puzzled me. Did she tell
you she loved him?"

"No, stupid, of course she did not. But have I not a pair of eyes in my
head? What do you suppose I got up for this morning at such an unearthly
hour and went over to--Oh, such an awful place!--to see that idiot? Just
to tell him I was sorry? Not a bit of it! I went to find out what was
going on, and now I know; and what