when Mrs. Tarbell accosted them.

Mrs. Tarbell stood in the established attitude of a woman in front of a
rainy-day gutter, holding her skirts with one hand and leaning forward
at such an angle that the drippings from the mid-rib of her umbrella
fell in equal streams upon the small of her back and a point precisely
thirteen inches from the tips of her galoshes.

"Bring her in here," cried Mrs, Tarbell, shaking her umbrella. "Bring
her in here." And she waved the umbrella in an elliptical curve about
her head.

"Where?" said the foremost of those addressed, an active-looking man
with a red moustache, a wet fur cap, and an umbrella under his arm.

"Here," said Mrs. Tarbell, thrusting her umbrella at the Land and Water
Company's building. To make her directions more accurate, she went to
the steps and nodded at the hall-way.

"The lady is my--has just been having a consultation with me," said Mrs.
Tarbell to the man in the red moustache, "and--"

"Which way?" said he.

"Right up-stairs: the first door at the head of the stairs, on the third
floor. I think you had better take her up in the elevator, because--"

"Cert'nly, cert'nly," he said, interrupting Mrs. Tarbell, who had
intended to be as brief and business-like as possible.