Part 32

"I knew we would. Isn't that curious? I--I believe I can almost tell you what else is going to happen to us."

"I'll tell you," hissed Smith; "it's an ambulance for yours and ding- dong to the funny-house! What are you trying to do now?" With real misgiving, for Brown, balanced on the edge of the gutter, began waving his arms in a birdlike way as though about to launch himself into aerial flight across Forty-second Street.

"The car!" he exclaimed excitedly, "the cherry-colored cross-town car! Where is it? Do you see it anywhere, Smith?"

"What? What do you mean? There's no cross-town car in sight. Brown, don't act like that! Don't be foolish! What on earth----"

"It's coming! There's a car coming!" cried Brown.

"Do you think you're a racing runabout and I'm a curve?"

Brown waved him away impatiently.

"I tell you that something most astonishing is going to occur--in a cherry-colored tram car.... And somehow there'll be some reason for me to get into it."

"Into what?"

"Into that cherry-colored car, because--because--there'll be a wicker basket in it--somebody holding a wicker basket--and there'll be--there'll be--a--a--white summer gown--and a big white hat----"

Smith stared at his friend in grief and amazement. Brown stood balancing himself on the gutter's edge, pale, rapt, uttering incoherent prophecy concerning the advent of a car not yet visible anywhere in the immediate metropolitan vista.

"Old man," began Smith with emotion, "I think you had better come very quietly somewhere with me. I--I want to show you something pretty and nice."

"Hark!" exclaimed Brown.

"Sure, I'll hark for you," said Smith, soothingly, "or I'll bark for you if you like, or anything if you'll just come quietly."

"The cherry-colored car!" cried Brown, laboring under tremendous emotion. "Look, Smithy! That is the car!"

"Sure, it is! I see it, old man. They run 'em every five minutes. What the devil is there to astonish anybody about a cross-town cruiser with a red water line?"

"Look!" insisted Brown, now almost beside himself. "The wicker basket! The summer gown! Exactly as I foretold it! The big straw hat!--the--the girl!"

And shoving Smith violently away he galloped after the cherry-colored car, caught it, swung himself aboard, and sank triumphant and breathless into the transverse seat behind that occupied by a wicker basket, a filmy summer frock, a big, white straw hat, and--a girl--the most amazingly pretty girl he had ever laid eyes on. After him, headlong, like a distracted chicken, rushed Smith and alighted beside him, panting, menacing.

"Wha'--dyeh--board--this--car--for!" he gasped, sliding fiercely up beside Brown. "Get off or I'll drag you off!"

But Brown only shook his head with an infatuated smile.

"Is it that girl?" said Smith, incensed. "Are you a--a Broadway Don Juan, or are you a respectable lawyer with a glimmering sense of common decency and an intention to keep a social engagement at the Carringtons' to-day?"

And Smith drew out his timepiece and flourished it furiously under Brown's handsome and sun-tanned nose.

But Brown only slid along the seat away from him, saying:

"Don't bother me, Jim; this is too momentous a crisis in my life to have a well-intentioned but intellectually dwarfed friend butting into me and running about under foot."

"Intellectually d-d--do you mean me?" asked Smith, unable to believe his ears. "Do you?"

"Yes, I do! Because a miracle suddenly happens to me on Forty-second Street, and you, with your mind of a stockbroker, unable to appreciate it, come clattering and clamoring after me about a house party--a common- place, every-day, social appointment, when I have a full-blown miracle on my hands!"

"What miracle?" faltered Smith, stupefied.

"What miracle? Haven't I been telling you that I've been having that queer sense that all this has happened before? Didn't I suddenly begin-- as though compelled by some unseen power--to foretell things? Didn't I prophesy the coming of this cross-town car? Didn't I even name its color before it came into sight? Didn't I warn you that I'd probably get into it? Didn't I reveal to you that a big straw hat and a pretty summer gown----"