You don’t get no thanks fer meddling.”

Greg flashed him a look from his steady gray eyes.

“Get me a taxi!” he ordered. “She’s not dead! Only fainted!”

“Ya can’t tell, buddie! She might pass out on ya!” said the bystander.

“Where is the nearest hospital?” demanded Greg, ignoring the man with the advice.

A boy dashed out into the road and stopped a taxi. A shabby man hurried to the fountain and filled his hat full of water from the basin. A woman walking through the park produced a bottle of smelling salts.

Greg wet his handkerchief in the hat and wiped the girl’s forehead and lips. He let the woman hold the bottle of smelling salts under her nostrils, and they were rewarded by a long, slow, trembling breath from the girl, and then a lifting of the fringes of the eyelids just for a fleeting instant that showed great, dark, troubled eyes. The fringes fell almost instantly, but the crowd had seen that she was alive, and a murmur of sympathy went through them like the sighing of the wind.

But Greg saw the taxi draw up at the curb, and he swept them all aside and carried his burden over. He got in with her in his arms.

“The nearest hospital, quick!” he ordered, and they whirled away, leaving the gaping crowd to discuss the incident.

Greg sat holding the girl in his arms, looking down at the white face against his shoulder, the long curling lashes, the disheveled brown hair. Her hat had fallen off, and one of the bystanders had laid it in her arms, a little soft, black felt with a tiny bright feather stuck cockily through the brim, a brave attempt to be like the world. But the rest of her attire was undeniably shabby. Little, stubbed-out shoes, worn down at the heel but bravely polished. Shabby gloves carefully mended. He felt a sudden mistiness in his eyes, a sudden estimate of the preciousness of his burden. Perhaps she was very dear to somebody. There must be people who loved her, many perhaps, but for the time being she was his to protect, until someone else should claim her. He perhaps was all that stood between her and death.

He drew his breath in sharply. If she was living yet!

He looked down with fear. How white her lips were! Perhaps that look she had given had been her last one on earth! Oh, would they never reach the hospital? How light and frail her body seemed! There was something pitiful in the droop of her lips. Something that made him think with a pang of his mother in her last days. Was this death? He held her lightly and felt the wonder of her delicate face against his shoulder.

There! They were stopping! Yes, this was a hospital building. A white-clad doctor appeared! A nurse! They tried to take her from him, but he bore her swiftly up the steps.

“Hurry!” he said. “She may not be gone yet!”

“The emergency ward is full!” he heard a nurse’s voice say sharply. “That fire! They kept bringing them in! Two have died already, but the beds are full.”

“Take her to a private room!” he commanded.

“A private?” another nurse asked. “Who is she? We can’t put her in a private room unless we know she can pay.”

“I will pay. Get her somewhere quick!” said Greg.

Magic money! How it oiled the wheels and hastened matters. No, they were not hardhearted. They were used to emergencies. But there had been so many that night. And the head nurse was off on her vacation. It was only a substitute who was trying to be conscientious.

She was on a bed at last with a doctor and nurse working over her. Finally, the doctor straightened up and looked around.

“Who brought her here? What happened?”

“I did,” said Greg.