r, black but plentifully shot
with grey, was brushed plainly back from her high forehead, and was
gathered under a small round felt hat, like that of a man, with
one sprig of feather in the band as a concession to her sex. A
double-breasted jacket of some dark frieze-like material fitted closely
to her figure, while her straight blue skirt, untrimmed and ungathered,
was cut so short that the lower curve of her finely-turned legs was
plainly visible beneath it, terminating in a pair of broad, flat,
low-heeled and square-toed shoes. Such was the lady who lounged at
the gate of number three, under the curious eyes of her two opposite
neighbors.

But if her conduct and appearance had already somewhat jarred upon their
limited and precise sense of the fitness of things, what were they to
think of the next little act in this tableau vivant? The cabman, red and
heavy-jowled, had come back from his labors, and held out his hand for
his fare. The lady passed him a coin, there was a moment of mumbling
and gesticulating, and suddenly she had him with both hands by the red
cravat which girt his neck, and was shaking him as a terrier would
a rat. Right across the pavement she thrust him, and, pushing him up
against the wheel, she banged his head three several times against the
side of his own vehicle.

"Can I be of any use to you, aunt?" asked the large youth, framing
himself in the open doorway.

"Not the slightest," panted the enraged lady. "There, you low
blackguard, that will teach you to be impertinent to a lady."

The cabman looked helplessly about him with a bewildered, questioning
gaze, as one to whom alone of all men this unheard-of and extraordinary
thing had happened. Then, rubbing his head, he mounted slowly on to the
box and drove away with an uptossed hand appealing to the universe. The
lady smoothed down her dress, pushed back her hair under her little felt
hat, and strode in through the hall-door, which was closed behind her.
As with a whisk her short skirts vanished into the darkness, the two
spectators--Miss Bertha and Miss Monica Williams--sat looking at each
other in speechless amazement. For fifty years they had peeped through
that little window and across that trim garden, but never yet had such a
sight as this come to confound them.

"I wish," said Monica at last, "that we had kept the field."

"I am sure I wish we had," answered her sister.

CHAPTER II. BREAKING THE ICE.

The cottage from th