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“My friend,” I said, “I am sorry for you, but I do not see how it would help you, should I refuse to go and you should, as you say, smash my head in.”

“Don’t you worry none about that,” he said. “If I smashed your head in, as I could do easy enough with this wrench, I’d take what was left of you up some dark street, and lay you on the pavement and run the machine across you once or twice, and then take you to a hospital, and that would be excuse enough. You’d be another ‘Killed by an Automobile,’ and I’d be the hero that picked you up and took you to the hospital.”

“Well,” I said, “under the circumstances I shall go with you, not because you threaten me, but because your poor wife and six children are threatened with starvation.”

“Good!” he said. “And now all you have to do is to think of what the excuse you will give my lady boss will be.”

With that he lay back against the cushions and waited. He seemed to feel that the matter did not concern him any more, and that the rest of it lay with me.

“Go ahead!” I said to him. “I have no idea what I shall tell your mistress, but since I have lost the last train I must try to catch the two o’clock trolley car to Westeote, and I do not wish to spend any more time than necessary on this business. Make all the haste possible, and as we go I shall think what I will say when we get there.”

The driver got out and took his seat and started the car. I was worried, indeed, my dear. I tried to think of something plausible to tell the young man’s employer; something that would have an air of self-proof, when suddenly I remembered the half-filled nursing-bottle and the three auburn-red curls. Why should I not tell the lady that a poor mother, while proceeding down Fifth Avenue from her scrub-woman job, had been taken suddenly ill, and that I, being near, had insisted that this automobile help me convey the woman to her home, which we found, alas! to be in the farthest districts of Brooklyn? Then I would produce the three auburn-red curls and the half-filled nursing-bottle as having been left in the automobile by the woman, and this proof would suffice.

I had fully decided on this when the automobile stopped in front of a large house in Fifth Avenue, and I had time to tell the driver that I had thought of the proper thing to say, but that was all, for the waiting lady came down the steps in great anger, and was about to begin a good scolding, when she noticed me sitting in her automobile.

If she had been angry before she was now furious, and she was the kind of young woman who can be extremely furious when she tries. I think nothing in the world could have calmed her had she not caught sight of my face by the light of two strong lamps on a passing automobile. She saw in my face what you see there now, my dear–the benevolent, fatherly face of a settled-down, trustworthy, married man of past middle age–and as if by magic her anger fled and she burst into tears.

“Oh, sir!” she cried, “I do not know who you are, nor how you happen to be in my car, but at this moment I am homeless and friendless. I am alone in the world, and I need advice. Let me get into the car beside you–“

“Miss,” I said, “I do not like to disoblige you, but I can never allow myself to be in an automobile at this time of night with a strange woman, unchaperoned.”

These words seemed almost more than she could bear, and my heart was full of pity, but, just as I was about to spring from the automobile and rush away, I saw on the walk the poor woman to whose baby I had given the half of the contents of the patent nursing-bottle. I called her and made her get into the automobile, and then I let the young woman enter.