a hard morning’s work on her new book she felt that her mind needed cooling, and found that the rush of air against her face effected this satisfactorily. The greater the rush, the quicker the cooling. However, as the alert inhabitants of Manhattan Island, a hardy race trained from infancy to dodge taxicabs and ambulance wagons, had always removed themselves from her path with their usual agility, she had never yet had an accident. 

 But then she had never yet met George Pennicut. And George, pawn of fate, was even now waiting round the corner to upset her record. 

 George, man of all work to Kirk Winfield, one of the youngest and least efficient of New York’s artist colony, was English. He had been in America some little time, but not long enough to accustom his rather unreceptive mind to the fact that, whereas in his native land vehicles kept to the left, in the country of his adoption they kept to the right; and it was still his bone-headed practice, when stepping off the sidewalk, to keep a wary look-out in precisely the wrong direction. 

 The only problem with regard to such a man is who will get him first. Fate had decided that it should be Lora Delane Porter. 

 To-day Mrs. Porter, having circled the park in rapid time, turned her car down Central Park West. She was feeling much refreshed by the pleasant air. She was conscious of a glow of benevolence toward her species, not excluding even the young couple she had almost reduced to mincemeat in the neighbourhood of Ninety-Seventh Street. They had annoyed her extremely at the time of their meeting by occupying till the last possible moment a part of the road which she wanted herself. 

 On reaching Sixty-First Street she found her way blocked by a lumbering delivery wagon. She followed it slowly for a while; then, growing tired of being merely a unit in a procession, tugged at the steering-wheel, and turned to the right. 

 George Pennicut, his anxious eyes raking the middle distance—as usual, in the wrong direction—had just stepped off the kerb. He received the automobile in the small of the back, uttered a yell of surprise and dismay, performed a few improvised Texas Tommy steps, and fell in a heap. 

 In a situation which might have stimulated another to fervid speech, George Pennicut contented himself with saying “Goo!” He was a man of few words. 

 Mrs. Porter stopped the car. From all points of the compass citizens 

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