The man’s mouth twitched under his bristling moustache, but he only said politely, “You probably mean Mr. Oatley.  He’s just come in.”  Then to Mary’s horror, the man she had described rose from a desk somewhere behind the teller, and came forward pompously.  It seemed to Mary that she stood there a week, explaining and explaining as one runs in a nightmare without making any progress, about dropping the wrong coin in the St. Boniface collection; an old family heirloom, something she would not have parted with for a fortune; then about telephoning to the rectory and to Oatley Crest.  The perspiration was standing out on her forehead when she finished.

But in a moment the ordeal was over.  A clerk was at that instant in the act of counting the money which Mr. Oatley had brought in to deposit.  The shilling rolled out from among the quarters, and as she hurriedly repeated the date and inscription to prove her story, the coin was passed back to her with a polite bow.

She looked into her purse for the quarter which she had started to put into the collection, then remembered that she had loaned it to Joyce for car-fare the night before.  There was a dollar in the middle compartment, and eager to get away, she plumped it down on the marble slab, saying hastily, “That’s for the plate—­what I should have put in instead of the shilling, and I can never begin to tell you how grateful I am to get this back.”

In too great haste to see the amused glances that followed her, she hurried out to the corner to wait for a home-going car.  While she stood there she opened her purse again for one more look at the rescued shilling.  Then she gave a gasp.  When she left the house the purse had held a nickel and a dollar.  She had spent the nickel for car fare and left the dollar at the bank.  Nothing was in it now but the shilling, and that was not a coin of the realm, even had she been willing to spend it.  She would have to walk home.

“Now I am in for an adventure,” she groaned, looking helplessly around at the hundreds of strange faces sweeping past her.  “It’s like ’water, water everywhere, and not a drop to drink.’  People, people everywhere, and not a soul that I dare speak to.”

Knowing that she could never find her way home should she undertake to walk all those miles, and that she would attract unpleasant attention if she stood there much longer, she started to stroll on, trying to decide what to do next.  One block, two blocks and nearly three were passed, and she had reached no decision, when she came upon a motherly-looking woman and two half-grown girls, who had stopped in front of a window to look at a display of hats, marked down to half price.  Mary stopped too.  Not that she was interested in hats, but because she felt a sense of protection in their company.

“No, mamma,” one of the girls was saying, “I’m sure we’ll find something at Wanamaker’s that will suit us better, and it’s only a few blocks farther.  Let’s go there.”