The lady passed him a coin, there was a moment of
mumbling and gesticulating, and suddenly she had him with both hands by
the red cravat which girt his neck, and was shaking him as a terrier
would a rat. Right across the pavement she thrust him, and, pushing him
up against the wheel, she banged his head three several times against
the side of his own vehicle.
"Can I be of any use to you, aunt?" asked the large youth, framing
himself in the open doorway.
"Not the slightest," panted the enraged lady. "There, you low
blackguard, that will teach you to be impertinent to a lady."
The cabman looked helplessly about him with a bewildered, questioning
gaze, as one to whom alone of all men this unheard-of and extraordinary
thing had happened. Then, rubbing his head, he mounted slowly on to the
box and drove away with an uptossed hand appealing to the universe. The
lady smoothed down her dress, pushed back her hair under her little felt
hat, and strode in through the hall-door, which was closed behind her.
As with a whisk her short skirts vanished into the darkness, the two
spectators--Miss Bertha and Miss Monica Williams--sat looking at each
other in speechless amazement. For fifty years they had peeped through
that little window and across that trim garden, but never yet had such a
sight as this come to confound them.
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