his arms in a birdlike way as though about to launch himself into aerial
flight across Forty-second Street.

"The car!" he exclaimed excitedly, "the cherry-colored cross-town car!
Where is it? Do you see it anywhere, Smith?"

"What? What do you mean? There's no cross-town car in sight. Brown, don't
act like that! Don't be foolish! What on earth----"

"It's coming! There's a car coming!" cried Brown.

"Do you think you're a racing runabout and I'm a curve?"

Brown waved him away impatiently.

"I tell you that something most astonishing is going to occur--in a
cherry-colored tram car.... And somehow there'll be some reason for me to
get into it."

"Into what?"

"Into that cherry-colored car, because--because--there'll be a wicker
basket in it--somebody holding a wicker basket--and there'll be--there'll
be--a--a--white summer gown--and a big white hat----"

Smith stared at his friend in grief and amazement. Brown stood balancing
himself on the gutter's edge, pale, rapt, uttering incoherent prophecy
concerning the advent of a car not yet visible anywhere in the immediate
metropolitan vista.