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A voice spoke in Miss Smith’s ear–a low and well-bred and musical voice.

“I beg your pardon,” it said hesitatingly, then stopped.

Miss Smith turned her head toward the speaker and now for the first time had a fair chance to look into the face of the voice’s owner. She looked and saw the oval of a most comely face, white and drawn as though by exhaustion or by deep sorrow, or perhaps by both. For all their pallor the cheeks were full and smooth; the brow was broad and low; the mouth firm and sweet. From between the tall collars of the cape the throat, partly revealed, rose as a smooth fair column. What made the girl almost beautiful were her eyes–eyes big and brown with a fire in them to suggest the fine high mettle of a resolute character, but out of them there looked–or else the other was woefully wrong–a great grief, a great distress bravely borne. To herself–all in that instant of looking–she said mentally that these were the saddest, most courageous eyes she ever had seen set in a face so young and seemingly bespeaking so healthful a body. For a moment Miss Smith was so held by what she saw that she forgot to speak.

“I beg your pardon,” repeated the girl. “I wonder if you would be good enough to bring me a drink of water–if it isn’t too much trouble. I’m so thirsty. I can’t very well go myself–there are reasons why I can’t. And I don’t think she”–with a sidelong glance toward the nodding figure opposite–“I don’t think she would feel that she could go and leave me.’

“Certainly I will,” said Miss Smith. “It’s not a bit of bother.”

“What is it?” The woman had been roused to full wakefulness by the movement of the stranger in rising.

“Please don’t move,” said Miss Smith. “Your young lady is thirsty and I’m going to bring her a drink of water–that’s all.”

“It’s very good of you, miss,” said the elder woman. She reached for her hand bag. “I think I’ve got a penny here for the cup.”

“I’ve plenty of pennies,” said Miss Smith.

At the cooler behind the forward door she filled a paper cup and brought it back to where the two were. To her surprise the elder woman reached for the cup and took it from her and held it to the girl’s lips while she drank. With a profound shock of sympathy the realization went through Miss Smith that the girl had not the use of her hands.

Having drunk, the girl settled back in her former posture, her face half turned toward the window and her head drooping as if from weariness. The woman laid the emptied cup aside and at once was dozing off again. The third member of the group sat in pitying wonder. She wondered what affliction had made a cripple of this wholesome-looking bonny creature. She thought of ghastly things she had read concerning the dreadful after effects of infantile paralysis, but rejected the suggestion, because no matter what else of dread and woe the girl’s eyes had betrayed the face was too plump and the body, which she could feel touching hers, too firm and well nourished to betoken a present and wasting infirmity. So then it must have been some accident–some maiming mishap which probably had not been of recent occurrence, since nothing else about the girl suggested physical impairment. If this deduction were correct, the wearing of the shrouding blue cape in an atmosphere almost stiflingly close stood explained. It was so worn to hide the injured limbs from view. That, of course, would be the plausible explanation. Yet at the same time an inner consciousness gave Miss Smith a certain and absolute conviction that the specter of tearfulness lurking at the back of those big brown eyes meant more than the ever-present realization of some bodily disfigurement.

Fascinated, she found her eyes searching the shape beside her for a clew to the answer of this lamentable mystery. In her covert scrutiny there was no morbid desire to spy upon another’s hidden miseries–our Miss Smith was too well-bred for that–only was there a sudden quickened pity and with that pity a yearning to offer, if opportunity served, any small comfort of act or word which might fitly come her way. As her glance–behind the cover of her reopened book–traveled over the cloaked shape searching for a clew to the secret she saw how that chance promised to serve her ends. The girl was half turned from her, a shoulder pressing against the window ledge; the twist of her body had drawn one front breadth of the cape awry so that no longer did it completely overlap its fellow. In the slight opening thus unwittingly contrived Miss Smith could make out at the wearer’s belt line a partly obscured inch or two of what seemed to be a heavy leathern gear, or truss, which so far as the small limits of the exposed area gave hint as to its purpose appeared to engage the forearms like a surgical device, supporting their weight below the bend of the elbows. With quickening and enhanced sympathy the little woman winced.