HER BROTHER'S KEEPER

IN a motor-bus, making its vociferous way along one of the noisiest of main City thoroughfares, sat Dulcie Hurst.
She was used to London clamour, and it hardly disturbed the even current of her thoughts. Omnibuses lumbered by in the opposite direction; cabs went this way and that; private motors, reluctantly compelled to creep, gave forth their asthmatic coughs of warning; yells of "Evening pi-per" pierced the din; but she neither turned her head nor varied her steadfast gaze.
She was close to the door, and one seat at the further end remained empty. All others were occupied.
Two distinct trains of ideas were working behind that strong pale face, at which few looked once without looking a second time.
"Will he be there?" she was asking, as she kept continuous watch for a certain side-street, at the corner of which her brother Norman, clerk in a house of business, was wont to joint the bus which took her back from her day in a city typing-office. Punctuality was not a prime virtue with Norman Hurst, and he often failed to arrive in time.