“Of course I shall make mistakes, but I have had everything done for me to such an extent, during the last four months, that I really must make a point of picking and choosing for once.  I’ve had a mad desire since the last storm to stir up the pools in the gutters with my best shoes, as the happy little children do with their rubber boots.  How I shall enjoy it when we go to Oaklands, and there is really something to do instead of merely being amused.

“By the way, Mrs. Evan, won’t you and Miss Lavinia join us at luncheon?  We are to have it somewhere downtown, to-day,—­the Waldorf, I believe,—­as mamma expects to spend most of the afternoon at the decorators, to see the designs for the Oaklands hangings and furniture, and,” glancing at the big clock, between the lifts, as Miss Lavinia made her last purchase, “it’s high time for me to go and pick her up.”

Having a feeling that possibly mamma might not be so cordial, in addition to being due at home for more shirtwaist fittings, Miss Lavinia declined, and reminding Sylvia that dinner would be at the old-fashioned hour of half-past six, we drifted out the door together, Sylvia going toward Fifth Avenue, while we turned the corner and sauntered down Broadway, pausing at every attractive window.

Miss Lavinia’s short-sightedness caused her to bump into a man, who was intently gazing, from the height of six feet, at jewelled bugs, displayed in the window of a dealer in Oriental wares.

The man, thinking himself to blame, raised his hat in apology, glancing casually down as he did so, whereupon the hat remained off, and he and Miss Lavinia grasped hands with sudden enthusiasm, followed by a medley of questions and answers, so that before she remembered me, and turned to introduce the stranger, I knew that it was Horace Bradford himself.  A strange, but positive, fact about New York is that one may at one time be in it but a few hours and run across half the people of one’s acquaintance, gathered from all parts of the country, and at another, wander about for weeks without seeing a familiar face.

I liked Bradford from the moment I shook hands with him.  There is so much in the mere touching of hands.  His neither crushed as if to compel, nor flopped equivocally, but said, as it enclosed yours in its bigness, “I am here, command me.”

Broadway, during shopping hours, is not an ideal place for the interchange of either ideas, or more, even, than the merest courtesies; but after thanking Miss Lavinia for the dinner invitation, to which he had just sent the answer, and inquiring for Sylvia Latham, as he walked beside us for a block or two, it was very evident that he had something on his mind that he wished to say, and did not know how to compass the matter.