When at last she had succeeded in getting to the plank-walk along the side of the railway track, and had thus, with the assistance of a train hand, reached the next station, she descended to the level of Mother Earth with her feelings somewhat dashed. In her forlorn plight she was not fit to be seen on the streets, and indeed the condition of her hat was so shocking as to make her hesitate to enter a public vehicle. There was not a cab in sight, but after a rapid walk to Broadway she discovered a great wholesale warehouse where, when she had explained that she had just been in a collision on the railway, they allowed her to purchase a cheap straw hat that was at least better than the one she discarded.
More delays! The cable-car, into which she finally got, ran along peacefully enough to just below Canal Street, where a block occurred, necessitating an attempt at possession of her soul in patience until the moments grew to feel like hours.
Unable to endure it longer, she sprang to the ground, crossing through a jam of vehicles to the sidewalk, then stood looking up and down for a cab. Everybody stared at her, until she was afraid she might be arrested upon a charge of drunkenness, because of her excitement and of her battered appearance.
Her face flamed with heat and exertion. The wound in her forehead streaked her handkerchief with blood. It was very near mid-day. Lacking a parasol, the sun’s ardor seemed to her more oppressive than it had ever been before. And, as ill-luck would have it, the passing cabs at that hour, in midsummer, and in that portion of the town, were so few and far between, that not one, not already occupied, came along until she was ready to cry with anxiety. It was the first time she had ever been there alone.
Poor Olive felt her courage oozing out at her finger tips. After all, would not she be laughed at by her father as a mistaken busybody, concerning herself with affairs of which she had no knowledge? And as the sun beat upon a pavement swarming with alien folk who jostled and stared at her, she almost gave up in despair.
“You make some mistakes, my impetuous little Olive,” had Stephen Luttridge said to her a few days before they parted, “and--perhaps--commit some follies. But your intuitions are the keenest, your pluck the best, I have ever seen in a woman. And I promise you now, I am going to stand by them both, so long as we both shall live.”