[Illustration: "'YOU 'RE NOT MUCH LIKE A GIRL I SAW TODAY, JANEY'"]
"On opposite sides of the street. She was a little ahead, for the car stopped on her side. I looked across at her with interest as I came along--wanted to find out what our neighbors were like, you know. She was carrying a big muff, and had some things in it--been shopping, of course. Oh, I don't mean parcels--she would n't be caught carrying a parcel--but letters and a purse and a card-case and a pocket-handkerchief, and so forth. Well, as we came along I noticed she had dropped something--handkerchief, by the way it fluttered down. Of course I bolted across the street, through six inches of spring mud, grasped the article, and rushed after her. I said, 'Pardon me, but you dropped your handkerchief,' and held it out. She took it, murmured 'Thank you!'--I saw her lips move this time--"and sailed on like a queen. I took off my hat, waded back through the mud, and was continuing on my thankless way----"
"Thankless!--I thought you just admitted she thanked you," objected Ross, with a twinkle.
"It was one of those thankless thank-yous, just the same," explained Peter, with gravity. "Well, as I say, I went on--like this story--meditating upon her cordial manner, when I saw something else fall from the capacious muff."
"Pardon me, I did. This time I did not bolt across the street; indeed, I stopped to consider whether I should not shout, 'Hi, hi, there, you 've dropped your purse, lady!' like a street gamin. But reflecting on the embarrassment this might cause me at some future date, when she and I should really meet, I picked my way across again, seized the pocketbook, and was about to pursue her, when she looked round and caught me in the act of scrutinizing it, as one naturally does upon picking up a gold-mounted, aristocratic affair like that, the like of which he expects never----"
"Oh, go on!" Rufus could no longer endure his brother's tantalising eloquence.
"I hastened to her side," continued Peter, who was gifted in the art of putting things elaborately when he chose, "and remarked, 'I believe this is yours?' She--now what, friends, would you naturally expect a girl to do on receiving the third favour from a stranger within fifteen minutes?"