As he spoke, a surge of the crowd drove the owner of the umbrella abruptly down on him. Darrow steadied her with extended arms, and regaining her footing she cried out: “Oh, dear, oh, dear! It’s in ribbons!”
Her lifted face, fresh and flushed in the driving rain, woke in him a memory of having seen it at a distant time and in a vaguely unsympathetic setting; but it was no moment to follow up such clues, and the face was obviously one to make its way on its own merits.
Its possessor had dropped her bag and bundles to clutch at the tattered umbrella. “I bought it only yesterday at the Stores; and—yes—it’s utterly done for!” she lamented.
Darrow smiled at the intensity of her distress. It was food for the moralist that, side by side with such catastrophes as his, human nature was still agitating itself over its microscopic woes!
“Here’s mine if you want it!” he shouted back at her through the shouting of the gale.
The offer caused the young lady to look at him more intently. “Why, it’s Mr. Darrow!” she exclaimed; and then, all radiant recognition: “Oh, thank you! We’ll share it, if you will.”
She knew him, then; and he knew her; but how and where had they met? He put aside the problem for subsequent solution, and drawing her into a more sheltered corner, bade her wait till he could find his porter.
When, a few minutes later, he came back with his recovered property, and the news that the boat would not leave till the tide had turned, she showed no concern.
“Not for two hours? How lucky—then I can find my trunk!”
Ordinarily Darrow would have felt little disposed to involve himself in the adventure of a young female who had lost her trunk; but at the moment he was glad of any pretext for activity. Even should he decide to take the next up train from Dover he still had a yawning hour to fill; and the obvious remedy was to devote it to the loveliness in distress under his umbrella.