Two Encounters

— One sunny morning I was lazily sauntering along the narrow Campus Martins, where the Romans of today do a large part of their shopping. It was spring, a time when the feminine "fancy lightly turns to thoughts ” of ribbons and laces, and my attention was absorbed by the beguiling contents of a small window. I was lost in contemplation of a delicious green silk, when all at once I felt the passers-by press closely against me, and a swift intuition said within me, “Your purse ! ” I delved my hand into my pocket. Intuition was right. The portemounaie was gone. I looked up and down the street, and singled out, a little ahead, two youths whose voices I had heard by my side a few seconds before. I dashed after them, and came alongside just as they were about to turn a corner.

“ Excuse me ! ” I exclaimed breathlessly ; and as I spoke they turned with courtesy. One was a sliabby-looking fellow of about eighteen, the other a neatly-dressed schoolboy. “ Excuse me, but just at this moment I have lost my purse,” said I, and then paused anxiously.

Their faces filled with kind sympathy.

“ Ah, really,” replied they, and waited for me to go on.

“It was just as you brushed past’me that I missed it,” I continued, with a throb of fear lest I should receive a blast of young impudence in return for the implication.

“ Oh, do you suspect us ? ” they asked, with a certain air of surprise ; and the younger lad added, with a smile of indulgent amusement, “ Why, I am the soil of a lieutenant ! ”

I colored hotly, and it flashed into my mind that perhaps I had dropped the purse in that last shop where I bought my gloves; but I fancied I saw a faint twitching of the younger boy’s face, and I was loath to abandon even this faint clue, so I went on, without giving myself time to think : —

“ Well, you must pardon me, but I do. I missed it just as you passed. Pray excuse my rudeness. I know I am offering you an insult. Please forgive me. But in the moment of losing money it is one’s instinct to try to recover it.” I paused again helplessly.

“ Why, of course,” said they sympathetically ; and then, as an inspiration, “ Would you like to search us ? Perhaps you would feel better satisfied.”

I hesitated. Practically I knew the search would be a farce, but I was vaguely unwilling to give them up.

“ Pardon me,” said I sheepishly, “ but I should.”

“ Well,” responded the elder of the two, “it is all right. Do not worry. We want you to be quite satisfied, and we can just step into a doorway. It would not he pleasant to do it in the street, as it might attract attention.”

Dreading a street crowd more nervously than they could, I agreed to the discreet proposal, and we trotted along amicably side by side, I feeling that I was on a fool’s errand. They turned into a narrow back street, and indicated a small passage leading to a cheap restaurant, which gave me somehow an unpleasant sensation of yellowpaper novels, and made me inclined to back out of the whole thing, and determined to get rid of them as soon as possible. However, we stepped into the dark corridor. A gentleman passing at the moment gave our trio a surprised, curious glance. When he was gone, the “ lieutenant’s son ” turned out his pockets, ostentatiously shook his handkerchief, and begged me to “ feel ” so as to be quite assured. Of course that was impossible. The quest was over. I thanked them meekly, and apologized humbly for my suspicion, to which they responded that it was all right, not to trouble, they only wished me to be quite satisfied, they did not mind at all, pray not to think of it again. They touched their hats respectfully and took their leave.

For some occult reason that expression “ pray do not think of it again ” seized my attention, and I felt a sudden reaction from my humility. “ Not think of it again. ’ After all, my purse was gone. They were almost too polite. Honesty would have been more brusque. “ If I lose track of them, I can do nothing more. I will see if they go to a suspicious place.”

I tripped nimbly after my quondam companions. They perceived me following, and the elder turned, with a shade of righteous indignation, and the question, “ Are you not satisfied ? ”

“No,” said I boldly, “I am not.”

“Would you like to search us again?” queried he. “ We told you to look for yourself.”

“No,” I returned, “a lady could not examine you ; ” and then, with sudden conviction, “ I want you to go with me to a policeman.”

(In parenthesis be it said that this was a stray shot, for I had not seen a policeman during the morning, and had no idea I should see one.)

It was their turn to be aggressive.

“ I could prosecute you for such a proposition,” quoth the lieutenant’s son ; ” and I had a vague feeling that he could, but I suddenly felt I would brave it out.

“ Well,” said I, “ give me back my purse quietly, and we will say no more about it.”

“ Give you your purse ! How can I give you what I have never had ? You shall have my father’s address, and then you can satisfy yourself about me.”

“ How should I know it was your real address ? ”

At this the elder nodded with ready perception of the point, and ejaculated iu friendly fashion, “Ha ragione!”

“ Let us go to a guard,” said I again.

“ What will my home people say to me if I get mixed up with the police ? ”

This was a reasonable Italian point of view, but an idea occurred to me, and I said, “ A person who has not taken anything does not mind going to the police. I have not stolen, and I should not mind being examined by the guard.” (I fear this was a circumstantial fib.) “ If you have not taken anything, you will not object, either. In five minutes he will see you have nothing, it is all over, and you go ou your way,”

They hesitated.

“ We go to the police at once,” repeated I.

To my amazement, the “ lieutenant’s son ” drew from the waist of his trousers my shabby black purse and laid it in my hand. Too astonished to upbraid him, never having realized that he truly had it, I thanked him with meek gratitude, us though it were a gift out of pure bounty. The older fellow laid his finger on his lip, and my two pickpockets vanished like a snow-wreath ; whereupon I waked up from my stupor of surprise to regret I had not had the presence of mind to moralize a little bit or to have them arrested.

Later that same season I was in the Swiss mountains, and one morning I started off for a long ramble up in the pine woods. It was very enticing. The smooth white paths and lofty aisles with patches of blue sky between seemed to invite one on indefinitely, and I wandered along, absorbed in the day dreams which piny smells stimulate and foster. At last I started homewards, but after making several turns I found that some of them must have been wrong, and that I had got quite out of the right way. It is easy to lose one’s bearings in a pine forest where every tree symmetrically resembles every other. I twisted and turned vainly, and, in despair, struck aside from the bewildering labyrinth to find myself in a clayey stream, down a deep ravine. Clambering out on the other side, with muddy feet and clogged ideas as to the points ok the compass, I was relieved to see daylight through the trees, and, soon after, to come out on the greenest meadow in the world, sloping away in a velvety expanse to the foot of the hill, where a farmhouse and a generous barn proclaimed human beings. My spirit rose with the thought that in ten minutes I could skip down the vast emerald field, find out whether I must turn to the right or the left, and perhaps after all reach home in time for the lunch which was beginning to seem very attractive. As I went on, rejoicing, I noticed that, from closely cut grass, I was coining to a part which had not yet been mown, and I had a swift consciousness that I should not he there.

I stooped to pick two big azure forget-menots, and as I raised my eyes I perceived a peasant woman at the foot of the field talking violently. With a virtuous desire not to walk over the grass any more than possible, I cried to her to know which direction I must take to reach a path to the Pension S—.The volley of words I received in return gave me no information, but convinced me that I was a trespasser being terrorized. Again I called to her to know which was the shortest way out of the great grassy expanse, and this time her flood of language was fairly virulent. I had no idea that Swiss German could express such maddened abuse.

We were getting nearer each other now. No insult seemed too outrageous, and the flow was not at all stemmed by my apologetic explanation that I had got lost; that, being a stranger, I did not know which way to take; that I was very sorry, and wanted to get out of her field as soon as I could. Perfectly absorbed by the buzz of her own anger, she heard nothing.

“ Sorry, indeed ! * * * [Stars stand for bad words.] Just let the master catch you ! * * * Get out, you hussy ! * * * Get out! * * * You wait until I come to you ! * * * I ’ll put you out by the shoulders ! ”

As I could extract no guidance from her, and every bewildered step I took seemed to infuriate her the more, while her words were emphasized by the barking of a big, angry dog who was straining wildly to get at me, it occurred to me that if I let her drive me out she would probably do it in the direction of some road or path. I therefore walked to meet her, saying gently, “ Please tell me which way you want me to go.”

Angrier than ever, she threw up her arms, headed me off as though I had been a naughty, errant cow, and then took me by the shoulders fairly to shove me out of the domain. I yielded to the pressure, allowing the torrent of bad words to flow freely over my head. My conjecture proved correct. She propelled me past dog and house, so that, a few moments later, while the angry echo of the virago’s voice still vibrated on the midday air, I stood safely on the highroad in a tremor of suppressed nervousness and amusement at this violent ejection. In a flash came the thought, “ Oh for the stern fidelity of a Swiss maid-servant and — the manners of a Roman pickpocket ! ”