At first I saw nothing but a large and handsome touring-car drawn up against the curb. Then I saw Drinkwater snuggled in a corner—and then a brown veil. I couldn’t help crossing the pavement, since Lydia did the same, and the brown veil seemed to expect me. "Miss Blair thought you might like a drive, Mr. Soames, so we came round to see if we could find you." "Come on in, Jasper," Drinkwater urged; "the water’s fine." "Come on. Don’t be silly," Miss Blair insisted, as I began to make excuses. Before I knew what I was doing I had stumbled into the seat opposite Miss Averill. She sat in the right-hand corner, Drinkwater in the left, Miss Blair between the two. I occupied one of the small folding armchairs, going backward. In another minute we were on our way through one of the cross-streets to Fifth Avenue. Having grasped the situation, I was annoyed. Miss Averill was taking the less fortunate of her acquaintance for an airing. Though I could do justice to her kindliness, I resented being forced again into a position from which I was trying to struggle out. Then I saw something that diverted my attention even from my wrongs. The pavements in Fifth Avenue were thronged with a slowly moving crowd of men and women, but mostly men, that made progress up or down impossible. Looking closely, I saw that they were all of the nations which people like myself are apt to consider most alien to the average American. Of true Caucasian blood there was hardly a streak among them. Dark, stunted, oddly hatted, oddly dressed, abject and yet eager, submissive and yet hostile, they poured up and up and up from all the side-streets, as runlets from a mountain-side into a great stream. For the pedestrian, the shopper, the _flâneur_, there was not an inch of foot room. These surging multitudes monopolized everything. From Fourteenth Street to Forty-second Street, a distance of more than a mile along the most extravagantly showy thoroughfare in the world, these two dense lines of humanity took absolute possession, driving clerks back into their shops and customers from trade by the sheer weight of numbers. "Good heavens! What’s up?" I cried, in amazement. Miss Averill, who was doubtless used to the phenomenon, looked mildly surprised. "Why, it’s always this way!" she smiled. "It’s their lunch-hour. They come from shops and workshops in the side-streets to see the sights and get the air." "But is it like this every day?" "Sure it is!" laughed Miss Blair. "Did you never see the Avenue before?" "I’ve never seen this before. I’m sure they didn’t do it a few years ago." Miss Averill agreed to this. It was a new manifestation, due to the changes this part of New York had undergone in recent years. "But how do the people get in and out of the shops?" Miss Blair explained that they couldn’t, which was the reason why so many businesses were being driven up-town. There was an hour in the day when everything was at a standstill.