The Water Ghost and Others

by John Kendrick Bangs

And then the car stopped at Seventeenth Street, and who should step on board but Miss Hollister herself!

"The idea!" thought Willis. "By Jove! there she is—on a horse-car, too! How atrocious! One might as well expect to see Minerva driving in a grocer's wagon as Miss Hollister in a horse-car. Miserable, untactful world to compel Minerva to ride in a horse-cart, or rather Miss Hollister to ride in a grocer's car! Absurdest of absurdities!"

Here he raised his hat, for Miss Hollister had bowed sweetly to him as she passed on to the far end of the car, where she stood hanging on to a strap.

"I wonder why she doesn't sit down?" thought Willis; for as he looked about the car he observed that with the exception of the one he occupied all the seats were vacant. In fact, the only persons on board were Miss Hollister, the driver, the conductor, and himself.

"I think I'll go speak to her," he thought. And then he thought again: "No, I'd better not. She saw me when she entered, and if she had wished to speak to me she would have sat down here beside me, or opposite me perhaps. I shall show myself worthy of her by not thrusting my presence upon her. But I wonder why she stands? She looks tired enough."

Here Miss Hollister indulged in a very singular performance. She bowed her head slightly at some one, apparently on the sidewalk, Willis thought, murmured something, the purport of which Willis could not catch, and sat down in the middle of the seat on the other side of the car, looking very much annoyed—in fact, almost unamiable.

Willis was more mystified than ever; but his mystification was as nothing compared to his anxiety when, on reaching Forty-second Street, Miss Hollister rose, and sweeping by him without a sign of recognition, left the car.

"Cut, by thunder!" ejaculated Willis, in consternation. "And why, I wonder? Most incomprehensible affair. Can she be a woman of whims—with eyes like those? Never. Impossible. And yet what else can be the matter?"

Try as he might, Willis could not solve the problem. It was utterly past solution as far as he was concerned.

"I'll find out, and I'll find out like a brave man," he said, after racking his brains for an hour or two in a vain endeavor to get at the cause of Miss Hollister's cut. "I'll call upon her to-night and ask her."