A white shower was falling at their feet, and, looking up, the two saw Pamela, the very picture of despair. The three girls were almost in front of the old Dane Law School, now given up to the uses of the Co-operative Society, and the sidewalk was slightly glazed with ice. The wind, blowing strong in the faces of Julia and Elizabeth, had apparently carried the slight figure of Pamela before it. Evidently, too, she had been shopping at some Harvard Square grocer’s, and in her efforts to keep herself from slipping, her black woollen bag had turned over, and its contents were scattered. If the grocer had tied up tightly that five-pound paper bag of granulated sugar there might have been no catastrophe; but in some way the string had loosened, and Pamela stood helpless, as the stream of sugar poured itself out on the sidewalk under the very eyes of the fastidious Elizabeth Darcy. Elizabeth passed on with a gesture of annoyance. On the steps of the Co-operative she had seen two or three youths whom she knew, and she did not intend to make herself one of a ridiculous group. Julia did not follow her, as she swept up the steps of the Co-operative. Nor did the Harvard youths accompany her. Elizabeth was accustomed to attention; and though these three raised their hats politely, and although one stepped forward to open the door, she noticed that the others hastened toward Julia.
Julia, too, had recognized the young men before she began to help Pamela, and had she acted on impulse, she might have passed on with Elizabeth, for she knew that Philip was only too ready to criticise anything strange in the appearance of a Radcliffe girl. But Julia would not have been Julia had she deserted Pamela.
The bag itself had slipped from the Vermont girl’s hands, and a note-book or two, and a number of loose sheets lay on the sidewalk. To save these papers from a coming gust, Philip and Will rushed forward. Had Julia not been there they might have hesitated to intrude on Pamela. Yet their natural chivalry would probably have triumphed.
“Never mind the sugar,” whispered Julia to Pamela, and the young men as politely ignored it.
Julia, then picking up the bag, replaced the papers and note-books that had been gathered up. Pamela, thoroughly abashed, tried to take the bag from her friend, with a feeble “Let me do it,” but Julia, finishing her self-imposed task, introduced Philip and Will to Pamela.
“We’re going to the car office,” she replied in answer to Philip’s question. Therefore, across the Square, accompanied by the two young men, Pamela and Julia threaded their way between two lines of electric cars.
“We’re evidently dismissed,” said Philip, as Julia bade them good-bye at the office; and after a word or two more, Will and he went back in the direction of the Yard.
“That was rather plucky in Julia, wasn’t it?” said Will.
“What?” asked Philip, who sometimes seemed to have the obtuseness of his sister.
“Why, the way she tried to make that girl feel comfortable—I didn’t catch her name. But she’s evidently a shy creature, and she had got herself into a scrape with all that sugar on the sidewalk.”