At the cooler behind the forward door she filled a paper cup and brought it back to where the two were. To her surprise the elder woman reached for the cup and took it from her and held it to the girl's lips while she drank. With a profound shock of sympathy the realization went through Miss Smith that the girl had not the use of her hands. Having drunk, the girl settled back in her former posture, her face half turned toward the window and her head drooping as if from weariness. The woman laid the emptied cup aside and at once was dozing off again. The third member of the group sat in pitying wonder. She wondered what affliction had made a cripple of this wholesome-looking bonny creature. She thought of ghastly things she had read concerning the dreadful after effects of infantile paralysis, but rejected the suggestion, because no matter what else of dread and woe the girl's eyes had betrayed the face was too plump and the body, which she could feel touching hers, too firm and well nourished to betoken a present and wasting infirmity. So then it must have been some accident--some maiming mishap which probably had not been of recent occurrence, since nothing else about the girl suggested physical impairment. If this deduction were correct, the wearing of the shrouding blue cape in an atmosphere almost stiflingly close stood explained. It was so worn to hide the injured limbs from view. That, of course, would be the plausible explanation. Yet at the same time an inner consciousness gave Miss Smith a certain and absolute conviction that the specter of tearfulness lurking at the back of those big brown eyes meant more than the ever-present realization of some bodily disfigurement. Fascinated, she found her eyes searching the shape beside her for a clew to the answer of this lamentable mystery. In her covert scrutiny there was no morbid desire to spy upon another's hidden miseries--our Miss Smith was too well-bred for that--only was there a sudden quickened pity and with that pity a yearning to offer, if opportunity served, any small comfort of act or word which might fitly come her way. As her glance--behind the cover of her reopened book--traveled over the cloaked shape searching for a clew to the secret she saw how that chance promised to serve her ends. The girl was half turned from her, a shoulder pressing against the window ledge; the twist of her body had drawn one front breadth of the cape awry so that no longer did it completely overlap its fellow. In the slight opening thus unwittingly contrived Miss Smith could make out at the wearer's belt line a partly obscured inch or two of what seemed to be a heavy leathern gear, or truss, which so far as the small limits of the exposed area gave hint as to its purpose appeared to engage the forearms like a surgical device, supporting their weight below the bend of the elbows. With quickening and enhanced sympathy the little woman winced.