“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.”

The conductor grinned in spite of himself.  “Well, mine is,” he declared, while with an authoritative finger he indicated the box into which Claire was to drop her fare.

“So all the other roosters think,” the woman let fall with a tolerant smile, while she diligently searched in her shabby purse for five cents.

Claire, in the doorway, lingered.

“Step right along in, my dear!  Don’t wait for me,” her friend advised, closing her teeth on a dime, as she still pursued an elusive nickel.  “Step right along in, and sit down anywheres, an’ if there ain’t nowheres to sit, why, just take a waltz-step or two in the direction o’ some of them elegant gen’lemen’s feet, occupyin’ the places meant for ladies, an’ if they don’t get up for love of you, they’ll get up for love of their shins.”

Still the girl did not pass on.

“Fare, please!” There was a decided touch of asperity in the conductor’s tone.  He glared at Claire almost menacingly.

Her lip trembled, the quick tears sprang to her eyes.  She hesitated, swallowed hard, and then brought it out with a piteous gulp.

“I had my fare—­’twas in my glove.  It must have slipped out.  It’s gone—­lost—­and—­”

A tug at the signal-strap was the conductor’s only comment.  He was stopping the car to put her off, but before he could carry out his purpose the woman had dropped her dime into the box with a sounding click.

“Fare for two!” she said, “an’ if I had time, an’ a place to sit, I’d turn you over acrost my knee, an’ give you two, for fair, young man, for the sake of your mother who didn’t learn you better manners when you was a boy!” With which she laid a kind hand upon Claire’s heaving shoulder, and impelled her gently into the body of the car, already full to overflowing.