Mame took a dingy handkerchief out of the bosom of her blouse, untied a corner, and James heard a jingle of coins meeting.  Then she laughed.  “You’re an awful fraud,” said she.

“Why?”

“You can’t cheat me, if you did Bill Slattery.”

“I think I don’t know what you mean.”

“You’re a gent.”

The girl’s thin, coarse laughter rang out after James as he descended the steps of the quick-lunch wagon.  She opened the door directly after he had closed it, and stood on the top step with the cold wind agitating her fair hair.  “Say,” she called after him.

James turned as he walked away.  “What is it?”

“Nothin’, only I was foolin’ you, and so was Bill.  I’ve got a feller, and Bill’s him.”

“I’ll make you a present when you’re married,” James called back with a laugh.

“It’s to come off next summer,” cried the girl.

“I won’t forget,” answered James.  He knew the girl lied; that she was not about to marry the workingman.  He said to himself, as he strode on refreshed with his coarse fare, that girls were extraordinary:  first they were bold to positive indecency, then modest to the borders of insanity.

James walked on.  He reached Stanbridge about noon.  Then he was hungry again.  There was a good hotel there, and he made a substantial meal.  He had a smoke and a rest of half an hour, then he resumed his walk.  He soon passed the outskirts of Stanbridge, which was a small, old city, then he was in the country.  The houses were sparsely set well back from the road.  He met nobody, except an occasional countryman driving a wood-laden team.  Presently the road lay between stately groves of oaks, although now and then they stood on one side only of the highway.  Nearly all the oaks bore a shag of dried leaves about their trunks, like mossy beards of old men, only the shag was a bright russet instead of white.  The ground under the oaks was like cloth-of-gold under the sun, the fallen leaves yet retained so much color.  James heard a sharp croak, then a crow flew with wide flaps of dark wings across the road and perched on an oak bough.  It cocked its head, and watched him wisely.  James whistled at it, but it did not stir.  It remained with its head cocked in that attitude of uncanny wisdom.

Suddenly James saw before him the figure of a girl, moving swiftly.  She must have come out of the wood.  She went as freely as a woodland thing, although she was conventionally dressed in a tailor suit of brown.  Her hat, too, was brown, and a brown feather curled over the brim.  She walked fast, with evidently as much enjoyment of the motion as James himself.  They both walked like winged things.