"Sir—" she shouted resolutely, and then she stopped, for, plainly, her oration was, in the premises, a misfit—the person beside her—the one of the mortal effrontery and immortal grip, being a—woman. A woman of masculine proportions, towering, deep-chested, large-limbed, but with a face which belied all these, for in it her sex shone forth in a motherliness unmistakable, as if the world at large were her family, and it was her business to see that it was generously provided for, along the pleasantest possible lines for all concerned.
"What car?" the woman trumpeted, gazing down serenely into Claire's little wet, anxious, upturned face at her elbow.
"Columbus Avenue."
The stranger nodded, peering down the glistening, wet way, as if she were a skipper sighting a ship.
"My car, too! First's Lexin'ton—next Broadway—then—here's ours!" Again that derrick-grip, and they stood in the heart of the maelstrom, but apparently perfectly safe, unassailable.
"They won't stop," Claire wailed plaintively. "I've been waiting for ages. The car'll go by! You see if it won't!"
It did, indeed, seem on the point of sliding past, as all the rest had done, but of a sudden the motorman vehemently shut off his power, and put on his brake. By some hidden, mysterious force that was in her, or the mere commanding dimensions of her frame, Claire's companion had brought him to a halt.
She lifted her charge gently up on to the step, pausing herself, before she should mount the platform, to close the girl's umbrella.
"Step lively! Step lively!" the conductor urged insistently, reaching for his signal-strap.
The retort came calmly, deliberately, but with perfect good nature. "Not on your life, young man. I been steppin' lively all day, an' for so long's it's goin' to take this car to get to One-hundred-an'-sixteenth Street, my time ain't worth no more'n a settin' hen's."