“Can’t you?” I asked, startled.  “Is it as bad as that?”

“It isn’t much better.  How’s your insomnia, Dominie?”

“Insomnia,” said I, “is a scientific quibble for unlaid memories.  I take mine out for the early morning air at times, if that’s what you mean.”

“It is.  Keep an eye on the kid, and do what you can to prevent that busy little mind of hers from brooding.”

In that way Mayme McCartney and I became early morning friends.  She adopted for her special own a bench some rods from mine under the lilac near the fountain.  After her walk, taken with her thin shoulders flung back and the chest filling with deep, slow breaths, she would pay me a call or await one from me and we would exchange theories and opinions and argue about this and other worlds.  Seventy against seventeen.  Fair exchange, for, if mine were the riper creed, hers was the more vivid and adventurous.  Who shall say which was the sounder?

On the morning of the astonishing Trespass, I was late, being discouraged by a light rain.  As she approached her bench, she found it occupied by an individual who appeared to be playing a contributory part in the general lamentation of nature.  The interloper was young and quite exquisite of raiment, which alone would have marked him for an outlander.  His elbows were propped on his knees, his fists supported his cheekbones, his whole figure was in a slump of misery.  Scrutinizing him with surprise, Mayme was shocked to see a glistening drop, detached from his drooping countenance, fall to the pavement, followed by another.  At the same time she heard an unmistakable and melancholic sound.

The benches in Our Square have seen more life than most.  They have cradled weariness of body and spirit; they have assuaged grief and given refuge to shaking terror, and been visited by Death.  They have shivered to the passion of cursing men and weeping women.  But never before had any of their ilk heard grown young manhood blubber.  Neither had Mayme McCartney.  It inspired her with mingled emotions, the most immediate of which was a desire to laugh.

Accordingly she laughed.  The intruder lifted a woeful face, gave her one vague look, and reverted to his former posture.  Mayme stopped laughing.  She advanced and put a friendly hand on one of the humped shoulders.

“Cheer up, Buddy,” she said.  “It ain’t as bad as you think it is.”

“It’s worse,” gulped a choky voice.  Then the head lifted again.  “Who are you?” it demanded.

“I’m your big sister,” said Mayme reassuringly.  “Tell a feller about it.”

The response was neither polite nor explanatory.  “D—–­n sisters!” said the bencher.

“Oh, tutt-tutt and naughty-naughty!” rebuked Mayme.  “Somebody’s sister been puttin’ somethin’ over on poor little Willy?”

“My own sister has.”  He was in that state of semi-hysterical exhaustion in which revelation of one’s intimate troubles to the first comer seems natural.  “She’s gone and got arrested,” he wailed.