" Out toward the horizon a passenger steamer en
route to some port farther north, or a long ore-freighter, singularly
uneventful between bow and far-distant afterhouse, on its way down from the
iron-ranges of Superior.
The path was narrow, but Cope, unexpectedly to himself, had no complaint to
make. Really, the girl did better here, somehow, than lots of other girls
would have done on a wide sidewalk. Most of them walked too close to you,
or too far from you, altering the interval suddenly and arbitrarily, and
tending to bump against you when you didn't expect it and didn't want it.
They were uncertain at crossings; if it was necessary for them to take your
arm, as it sometimes became, in the evening, on a crowded street, why, they
were too gingerly or else pressed too close; and if it happened to rain,
you sometimes had to take a cab, trafficking with a driver whose tariff and
whose disposition you did not know: in fact, a string of minor
embarrassments and expenses....
But the way, this afternoon, was clear and easy; and there were no
annoyances save from other walkers along the same path. The sun shone
brightly at intervals.
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