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paper dishes. I was too late on every thing. And now . . .” She and Eleanor both glanced down at the mess on the sidewalk, and the little lady said, “So you see, I couldn’t just take money, not money just from your hand, not for something that was left over.”
    â€œMay I buy you something to replace this, then? I’m in a terrible hurry, but if we could find some place that’s open—”
    The little old lady smiled wickedly. “I’ve still got this , anyway,” she said, and she hugged one package tight. “You may pay my taxi fare home,” she said. “Then no one else will be likely to knock me down.”
    â€œGladly,” Eleanor said and turned to the taxi driver, who had been waiting, interested. “Can you take this lady home?” she asked.
    â€œA couple of dollars will do it,” the little lady said, “not including the tip for this gentleman, of course. Being as small as I am,” she explained daintily, “it’s quite a hazard, quite a hazard indeed, people knocking you down. Still, it’s a genuine pleasure to find one as willing as you to make up for it. Sometimes the people who knock you down never turn once to look.” With Eleanor’s help she climbed into the taxi with her packages, and Eleanor took two dollars and a fifty-cent piece from her pocketbook and handed them to the little lady, who clutched them tight in her tiny hand.
    â€œAll right, sweetheart,” the taxi driver said, “where do we go?”
    The little lady chuckled. “I’ll tell you after we start,” she said, and then, to Eleanor, “Good luck to you, dearie. Watch out from now on how you go knocking people down.”
    â€œGood-by,” Eleanor said, “and I’m really very sorry.”
    â€œThat’s fine, then,” the little lady said, waving at her as the taxi pulled away from the curb. “I’ll be praying for you, dearie.”
    Well, Eleanor thought, staring after the taxi, there’s one person, anyway, who will be praying for me. One person anyway.

4
    It was the first genuinely shining day of summer, a time of year which brought Eleanor always to aching memories of her early childhood, when it had seemed to be summer all the time; she could not remember a winter before her father’s death on a cold wet day. She had taken to wondering lately, during these swiftcounted years, what had been done with all those wasted summer days; how could she have spent them so wantonly? I am foolish, she told herself early every summer, I am very foolish; I am grown up now and know the values of things. Nothing is ever really wasted, she believed sensibly, even one’s childhood, and then each year, one summer morning, the warm wind would come down the city street where she walked and she would be touched with the little cold thought: I have let more time go by. Yet this morning, driving the little car which she and her sister owned together, apprehensive lest they might still realize that she had come after all and just taken it away, going docilely along the street, following the lines of traffic, stopping when she was bidden and turning when she could, she smiled out at the sunlight slanting along the street and thought, I am going, I am going, I have finally taken a step.
    Always before, when she had her sister’s permission to drive the little car, she had gone cautiously, moving with extreme care to avoid even the slightest scratch or mar which might irritate her sister, but today, with her carton on the back seat and her suitcase on the floor, her gloves and pocketbook and light coat on the seat beside her, the car belonged entirely to her, a little contained world all her own; I am really going, she thought.
    At the last traffic light in the city, before she turned to go onto the great highway out of town, she stopped, waiting, and slid Dr. Montague’s letter out of her pocketbook. I will not