But would they? Every second the situation became more tense. Now they were carried ten paces toward Wabash Avenue; now, like some dance of death, the crowd surged backward toward Dearborn Street. And now, caught in an eddy, they whirled round and round.
In such a time as this the peril is great. Always, certain persons, deserting all caution, carried away by their own exuberance, render confusion worse confounded. Bands of young men, perhaps from high school or college, with hands on shoulders, built up flying wedges that shot through the crowd like bullets through wood.
Just such a group was pressing upon the stalwart Florence and all but crushing the breath out of her, when for the first time she became conscious of a little old lady in a faded shawl who fairly crouched at her feet.
“She’s eighty if a day,” she thought, with a sudden shock. “She’ll be killed unless—
“Petite Jeanne,” she screamed, “there are times when human beings have neither eyes, ears nor brains. They can always feel. You have sharp elbows. Use them now to the glory of God and for the life of this dear old lady in her faded shawl.”
Suiting actions to her own words, she kicked forth lustily with her square-pointed athletic shoe. The shoe made contact with a grinning youth’s shins. The look of joy on the youth’s face changed to one of sudden pain. He ceased to shove and attempted a retreat. One more grinning face was transformed by an elbow thrust in the stomach. This one doubled up and did his best to back away.
Jeanne added her bit. As Florence had said, her elbows were sharp and effective.
In an incredibly short time there was space for breathing. One moment the little old lady, who was not five feet tall and did not weigh ninety pounds, was in peril of her life; the next she was caught in Florence’s powerful arms and was being borne to safety. And all the time she was screaming:
“Oh! Oh! Oh! It is gone! It is lost! It is lost!”
“Yes,” Florence agreed, as she dropped her to the curbing, well out of the crush, “you have lost a shoe. But what’s a shoe? You would have lost your life. And, after all, how is one to find a shoe in such a place of madness?”