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On the morning of the astonishing Trespass, I was late, being discouraged by a light rain. As she approached her bench, she found it occupied by an individual who appeared to be playing a contributory part in the general lamentation of nature. The interloper was young and quite exquisite of raiment, which alone would have marked him for an outlander. His elbows were propped on his knees, his fists supported his cheekbones, his whole figure was in a slump of misery. Scrutinizing him with surprise, Mayme was shocked to see a glistening drop, detached from his drooping countenance, fall to the pavement, followed by another. At the same time she heard an unmistakable and melancholic sound.

The benches in Our Square have seen more life than most. They have cradled weariness of body and spirit; they have assuaged grief and given refuge to shaking terror, and been visited by Death. They have shivered to the passion of cursing men and weeping women. But never before had any of their ilk heard grown young manhood blubber. Neither had Mayme McCartney. It inspired her with mingled emotions, the most immediate of which was a desire to laugh.

Accordingly she laughed. The intruder lifted a woeful face, gave her one vague look, and reverted to his former posture. Mayme stopped laughing. She advanced and put a friendly hand on one of the humped shoulders.

“Cheer up, Buddy,” she said. “It ain’t as bad as you think it is.”

“It’s worse,” gulped a choky voice. Then the head lifted again. “Who are you?” it demanded.

“I’m your big sister,” said Mayme reassuringly. “Tell a feller about it.”

The response was neither polite nor explanatory. “D—n sisters!” said the bencher.

“Oh, tutt-tutt and naughty-naughty!” rebuked Mayme. “Somebody’s sister been puttin’ somethin’ over on poor little Willy?”

“My own sister has.” He was in that state of semi-hysterical exhaustion in which revelation of one’s intimate troubles to the first comer seems natural. “She’s gone and got arrested,” he wailed.

Mayme’s face became grave and practical.

“That’s different,” said she. “What’s her lay?”

“Lay? I don’t know–“

“What’s her line? What’s she done to get pinched?”

“Shoplifting. At the special night sale of the Emporium.”

“You’re tellin’ me! In the silks, huh?”

“What do you know about it? My God! Is it in the papers already?”

“Keep your hair on, Buddy. I work there, and I heard about that pinch. Swell young married lady. Say,” she added, after a thoughtful pause: “has she got somethin’ comin’?”

“Something coming? How? What?”

“Don’t be dumb. A kid.”

He stared. She was looking at him with unabashed frankness. Those who live in the close, rough intimacy of the slums do not cherish false shame about the major facts of life.

“Suppose she has?” queried the youth sulkily.

“Why, that’ll be all right, you poor boob,” returned the kindly Mayme. “The judge’ll let her off with a warning.”

“How do you know?”

“They always do. Those cases are common. Dolan ought to be canned for makin’ a pinch of a lady in the fam’ly way.”

“What if they do let her off?” lamented the youth. “It’ll be in all the papers and I’ll be ruined. My life’s spoiled. I might as well leave the city.”

“Ah, don’t do a mean trick like that to the old town!” besought the sardonic Mayme. “Where do you come in to get hurt?”

He burst into the hectic grievances of the pampered and spoiled child. His family was just getting a foothold in Society (with an almost holy emphasis on the word) and now they were disgraced. All was up. Their new, precariously held acquaintances would drop them. In his petulant grief he did an amazing thing; he produced a bunch of clippings from the local society columns, setting forth, in the printed company of the Shining Ones, the doings (mostly charitable) of Mrs. Samuel Berthelin, her daughter, Mrs. Harris, and her son, David, referred to glowingly as “the scion of the wealth and position of the late lamented financier.”

Mayme was impressed. Like most shop-girls she was a fervent reader of society news. (If shop-girls did not read this fine flower of American democracy, nobody would, except those who wait eagerly and anxiously for their names to appear.) She perceived–not knowing that the advertising leverage of the Berthelin Loan Agency had forced those insecure portals of print for the entry of Mrs. Berthelin and her progeny–that she was in the presence of the Great. Capacity for awe was not in Mayme’s independent soul. But she was interested and sympathetic. Here was a career worth saving!