This lack of self-consciousness underlay much that made March Gilchrist popular in his set. He was a clever artist, and wrought hard and well at his profession, although he had a rich father. His position in society was assured, his physique fine, and education excellent—advantages fully appreciated by most of the men, and all the women he knew. If he recognized their value he was an adroit dissembler. Simple and frank in manner, he met his world with outstretched hand. When the hand was not taken he laughed in good-humored astonishment, went about his business, and forgot the churl. His schoolmates used to say that it did not pay to quarrel with him; his parents, that he and his sister May should exchange names. That his amiability was not the result of a phlegmatic temperament was apparent in the quick brightness of the eyes that roved about the dining room, leaving out nothing—from the lunch counter in the adjoining room, set with long ranks of salvers with globular glass covers that gave the array the expression of a chemist’s laboratory, to the whirligig fans that revolved just below the ceiling with the dual mission of cooling the atmosphere and chasing away flies. Our returned traveler seemed to find these harbingers of summer weather and summer pests amusing. He was watching them when a voice behind him accosted a hurrying waiter. “There is a young girl over there who cannot walk. Will you lift her out of her chair and bring her in? It is just at the door, and she is very light.” “Busy now, miss! Better ask somebody else!” pushing past. The baffled applicant stood in the middle of the floor, irresolute, seeming the more solitary and helpless because young and a woman. Thus much, and not that she was comely and a lady, March saw before he sprang to his feet and faced her respectfully. “I beg pardon! but can I be of use? It will give me pleasure if you will allow me.” Catching sight in the doorway of the one in whose behalf she had spoken, an arch smile—respectful still—lighted up his honest countenance. “If you will let me make amends for my awkwardness of a while ago!” He was a society man, and might have been aware how unconventional was the offer. He palliated the solecism, in describing the incident at home, by saying that he saw in every elderly woman his mother, in a young one, his only sister. “Thank you! if you will be so kind”—accepting the proposal as simply as it had been made. “I could bring her in myself, but she does not like to have me do it here.” “I should think not, indeed! One of the best uses to which a man’s muscles can be put is to help the weak,” rejoined March heartily. A gleam crossed the unchildish visage of the cripple when he stooped to lift her. She recognized him, but offered no verbal remark then, or when he deposited the light burden in the chair set for her by a waiter more humane, or less driven than his testy comrade.