A little ahead of her she saw a woman sitting in a market wagon, holding the horse. She got the impression that the woman was selling vegetables. She tried to notice, to be interested. She could see, as she came along toward the wagon, that the vegetables looked nice and fresh. She and Stuart had raised vegetables once; they had done various things after what money they had was exhausted and, handicapped both by his lack of ruggedness and by the shrinking from people which their position bred in them, they had to do the best they could at making a living. And so she noticed these vegetables, but it was not until she was close to her that she saw the woman had relaxed her hold on the lines and was leaning forward, peering at her. And when she came a little nearer this woman--a thin, wiry little person whose features were sharp, leaned still further forward and cried: "Why, how do you do? How d'do, Ruth!" For a moment Ruth was too startled to make any reply. Then she only stammered, "Why, how do you do?" But the woman leaned over the side of the wagon. Ruth was trying her best to think who she was; she knew that she had known her somewhere, in some way, but that thin, eager little face was way back in the past, and that she should be spoken to in this way--warm, natural--was itself too astonishing, moving, to leave her clear-headed for casting back. And then, just as she seemed about to say something, her face changed a little. Ruth heard a gate click behind her and then a man, a stolid farmer, he appeared, came up to the wagon. The woman kept nodding her head, as if in continued greeting, but she had leaned back, as though she had decided against what she had been about to say. Ruth, starting on, still bewildered, stirred, nodded and smiled too; and then, when the man had jumped in the wagon and just as the horse was starting, the woman called: "It seems awful good to have you back on these streets, Ruth!" Ruth could only nod in reply and hurried on; her heart beat fast; her eyes were blurring. "It seems awful good to have you back on these streets, Ruth!" Was _that_ what she had said? She turned around, wanting to run after that wagon, not wanting to lose that pinched, shabby, eager little woman who was glad to have her back on those streets. But the wagon had turned a corner and was out of sight. Back on those streets! It opened her to the fact that she was back on them. She walked more slowly, thinking about that. And she could walk more slowly; she was less driven.