He stooped once more and raised her tenderly, this time succeeding in getting her up, though it was evident that she was suffering intensely.
But when she was almost on her feet again she gasped and screamed and sank back in the snow, her face looking ghastly white in the changing light.
She was trying to rise, and he hastened to help her, with voluble excuses on his lips and true distress in his voice. Just at that moment the electric light chose to flare out fitfully once more in time to show him the form of a woman in a little dark heap at his feet on the pavement. He shut the umbrella quickly, regardless of the blinding snow, and tried to discover what mischief he had done. His umbrella had come sharply in contact with someone, and there had followed a quick exclamation of distress. He turned the corner abruptly, took one step forward and started back, half sliding. No wonder the whistle held the essence of cheerfulness in spite of the snow! His salary twice raised within six months, and a promotion in prospect for the first of the year a consciousness of several brave self-denials that had allowed him to save money enough for one or two ambitions of the future, as well as to provide a goodly array of Christmas gifts for his many friends an invitation to a great house to dinner that very evening, to which he would be hastening in a short time the opening of a charmed circle of young people to take him in the commendatory words from a mother-who was usually hard to please-still ringing in his ears from her last letter were not all these things enough to make him cheerful even in a wet snowstorm? He was thinking over the happy conditions of his life. Pemberton Halsey swung along the street with great strides, his umbrella down, his hat drawn forward to protect his eyes, and whistling. Something had happened to the electric arc-light that should have been on duty there. The night was dark and the corner was unlighted near the old Second Church. Every man had his collar turned up and his umbrella turned facing the wind, for it was a wet snow that melted as it came down and drove with a blurring sound into one’s ears and neck. People were remarking to each other that the cold weather had set in early, and it bade fair to be a white Christmas this year if it kept on. One needed to be very sure-footed to go abroad with safety. There were long black marks every few steps where unwary feet had slid unexpectedly. Snow was falling fast, and the pavements were slippery underneath it.
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