Ernestine raised her eyes, fixed them for one calm instant on Vida Levering's face, and then, turning round, said—
'Where's Mrs. Brown?'
'Never mind Mrs. Brown!' whispered the strange lady, drawing off as the rowdy young men came surging round that side.
There was another rush and a yell, and Vida fled. When next she turned to look, it was to see two women making a sudden dash for liberty. They had escaped through the rowdy ranks, and they tore across the street, running for their lives and calling for help as they ran.
Vida, a shade or two paler, stood transfixed. What was going to happen? But there was the imperturbable Ernestine holding the forsaken position, still the centre of the pushing, shouting little mob who had jeered frantically as the other women fled.
It was too much. Not Ernestine's isolation alone, the something childish in the brilliant face would have enlisted a less sympathetic observer. A single moment's wavering and the lady made for the place where the besiegers massed less thick. She was near enough now to call out over the rowdies' heads—
'Come. Why do you stay there?'
Faces turned to look at her; while Ernestine shouted back the cryptic sentence—
'It wasn't my bus!'
Bus? Had danger robbed her of her reason? The boys were cheering now and looking past Miss Levering: she turned, bewildered, to see 'Mrs. Brown' and a sister reformer mounting the top of a sober London Road car. They had been running for that, then—and not for life! Miss Levering raised her hand and her voice as she looked back at Ernestine—