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                            MARTHA BY-THE-DAY

                           By JULIE M. LIPPMANN

                                  1912




CHAPTER I


If you are one of the favored few, privileged to ride in chaises, you
may find the combination of Broadway during the evening rush-hour, in a
late November storm, stimulating--you may, that is, provided you have a
reliable driver. If, contrariwise, you happen to be of the class whose
fate it is to travel in public conveyances (and lucky if you have the
price!) and the car, say, won't stop for you--why--

Claire Lang had been standing in the drenching wet at the
street-crossing for fully ten minutes. The badgering crowd had been
shouldering her one way, pushing her the other, until, being a stranger
and not very big, she had become so bewildered that she lost her head
completely, and, with the blind impulse of a hen with paresis, darted
straight out, in amidst the crush of traffic, with all the chances
strong in favor of her being instantly trampled under foot, or ground
under wheel, and never a one to know how it had happened.

An instant, and she was back again in her old place upon the curbstone.
Something like the firm iron grip of a steam-derrick had fastened on her
person, hoisted her neatly up, and set her as precisely down, exactly
where she had started from.

It took her a full second to realize what had happened. Then, quick as a
flash, anger flamed up in her pale cheeks, blazed in her tired eyes.
For, of course, this was an instance of "insult" described by "the
family at home" as common to the experience of unprotected girls in New
York City. She groped about in her mind for the formula to be applied in
such cases, as recommended by Aunt Amelia. "Sir, you are no gentleman!
If you were a gentleman, you would not offer an affront to a young,
defenseless girl who--" The rest eluded her; she could not recall it,
try as she would. In desperate resolve to do her duty anyway, she tilted
back her umbrella, whereat a fine stream of water poured from the tip
directly over her upturned face, and trickled cheerily down the bridge
of her short nose.

"Sir--" she shouted resolutely, and then she stopped, for, plainly, her
oration was, in the premises, a misfit--the person beside her--the one
of the mortal effrontery and immortal grip, being a--woman. A woman of
masculine proportions, towering, deep-chested, large-limbed, but with a
face which belied all these, for in it her sex shone forth in a
motherliness unmistakable, as if the world at large were her family, and
it was her business to see that it was generously provided for, along
the pleasantest possible lines for all concerned.

"What car?" the woman trumpeted, gazing down serenely into Claire's
little wet, anxious, upturned face at her elbow.

"Columbus Avenue."

The stranger nodded, peering down the glistening, wet way, as if she
were a skipper sighting a ship.

"My car, too! First's Lexin'ton--next Broadway--then--here's ours!"
Again