"Did you ever see anything so disgraceful as this crossing--not a plank--nothing.
No--get out of my way, Peter; you will just upset me, and I would rather help myself." In reply Peter, promptly ignoring her protest, stepped in front of her, poked into several fraudulent solidities covering unfathomable depths, found one hard enough to bear the weight of Miss Felicia's dainty shoe--it was about as long as a baby's hand--and holding out his own said, in his most courtly manner: "Be very careful now, my dear: put your foot on mine; so! now give me your hand and jump.

There--that's it." To see Peter help a lady across a muddy street, Holker Morris always said, was a lesson in all the finer virtues.

Sir Walter was a bungler beside him.

But then Miss Felicia could also have passed muster as the gay gallant's companion.
And just here the Scribe remarks, parenthetically, that there is nothing that shows a woman's refinement more clearly than the way she crosses a street.
Miss Felicia, for instance, would no more have soiled the toes of her shoes in a puddle than a milk-white pussy would have dampened its feet in the splash of an overturned bowl: a calm survey up and down; a taking in of the dry and wet spots; a careful gathering up of her skirts, and over skimmed the slender, willowy old lady with a one--two--and three--followed by a stamp of her absurd feet and the shaking out of ruffle and pleat.

When a woman strides through mud without a shiver because she has plenty of dry shoes and good ones at home, there are other parts of her make-up, inside and out, that may want a looking after.
Miss Felicia safely landed on the dry and comparatively clean sidewalk, Peter put the question he had been framing in his mind since he first caught sight of that lady picking her way among the puddles.
"Well, how is he now ?" "His head, or his heart ?" she asked with a knowing smile, dropping her still spotless skirts.