To escape the tantalizing view of people mauling each other, I went into the deserted lounge and sat down and cried and cried in the most dejected misery. An impartial observer might very well have assumed that I had just been chained to first oar on a slave galley.

"You want something to cry in, young lady? No beer - how about a coke?" It was a steward. "Your family making you go abroad because you been raising hell? You in trouble, I betcha, huh?"

It should have cheered me that someone thought I looked dangerous enough to have been raising hell, but it didn't. The sentiment only added to my misery. "No," I sobbed on. "Darn it, I'm not the type that gets into trouble."

"Oh, you're not that bad," he consoled. "I betcha youll be in real swell trouble before we dock at Southampton. Drink up." He shoved a Coca-Cola at me.

I fumbled for my purse.

"This is unofficial," he shook his head. "On the house. Now pull yourself together and go out on deck. We're about to get under way and you don't want to miss that."

I sniffled, blew my nose and repaired the awful red thing with powder. I got up and tucked my crutches under my arms, still feeling very sympathetic with myself.

"Look sharp for the coaming when you go out - watch your step." If he'd been a practicing psychiatrist who'd had me laid out on a couch for six months boring into my inhibitions, he couldn't have hit more inspired therapeutics.

I quit handing myself condolences. It threw me right into a laughing fit.

He looked uneasy. "Was that good or something?"

"Oh, very good," I said, "even though I have heard it before. It's just an old family joke that gets funnier and funnier. I'm going to be fine now. Thanks."

"I'll keep an eye on you this trip."

"Swell - you watch my step for me."

He did, too. I never sat down in the lounge for a drink or an innocent game of bridge that he didn't slink up, squint his brows suspiciously, and scrutinize carefully whatever man I'd managed to snag. It was a little disconcerting to me, and it definitely made my victims uneasy. One sterling Cornell boy, in fact, protested. "That steward is certainly a queer duck - and damned rude if you ask me. The way he goes over me, you'd think I'd just held up the purser. If he dared lay his hands on me, I think he'd frisk me."

AS I WALKET OUT on deck, I thought I'd suddenly gone to Heaven and was tuned in on a choir of angels. The orchestra was playing "Our Sturdy Golden Bear." Californians in the crowd, even boys from Stanford who don't go for that tune, were all lit up proudly as if each one of them had personally planted every orange tree in the Golden State. The orchestra was a bunch of boys from the University of California who were playing their way to Europe. I, too, showed my good California ivories in a broad smile. As the ship weighed anchor, all the West Coasters were shaking hands and banging each other on the backs. From a lonely wake, I suddenly leaped into Wednesday of old home week.

Not at all surprising to a person on crutches, some of these native sons and daughters even recognized me. "Aren't you from Los Angeles? I am sure I remember seeing you shopping in Bullocks." Of course, they didn't actually remember me - they remembered my identifying crutches. Crutches, a sure tag, discourage a one-legger from a life of crime, but they are likely to be profitable in any situation short of bank robbery. And even then I'm pretty sure they'd soften up a jury almost as much as a hunk of tasty cheesecakes. Certainly they gave me a good start socially on shipboard.

A bouncing, bright-faced man tapped me on the arm and said, "How'd you like that chocolate soda you had Friday in Schrafft's?" I looked at him in astonishment.

"I was sitting right there beside you at the counter," he said. "I had vanilla."

He was the social director of the Leviathan and he regarded our former encounter as an occult sign. He made me his protegee. Every night he lifted the rope and let me and several selected friends in on the sacred revelry in first cabin. This was a dubious privilege since the passengers in Third while less heavily laden with lucre were much lighter on their feet. It was also comforting to hear "Our Sturdy Golden Bear" every night, even though Ben Bernie's music in First was perhaps eight beats to the bar more professional.

IT IS A CURIOUS eccentricity, but people have a tendency to regard girls on crutches as a special breed who behave - or should behave, anyway - entirely differently from other humans. During one crossing I had a charming old lady as my cabin mate. She was very much concerned about my welfare. In fact, I think it was her main interest in life, since she didn't approve of much of anything else that went on aboard ship.

I was much more agile than she, but I practically had to knock her senseless to get her to take the lower berth. She was solicitous of my metabolism and always inquired daily about my diet and elimination. "You can't be too careful on crutches," she told me solemnly. "You must keep up your strength." What she wanted me to keep it up for, I certainly can't imagine.

She had a disconcerting habit of sitting bolt up-right in bed when I came in at night - checking the time by her watch. Then, apparently completely puzzled, she demanded, "Now, will you tell me please what a young lady on crutches does on shipboard until one o'clock in the morning?"

One time I was bold enough to make a little arch inquiry on my own. "What do you think young ladies without crutches do?" I asked her.

"Oh, mercy goodness!" she gasped. "You don't do that, do you?"

WHEN I ARRIVED in London from the boat train, I became the ward of a professional guide who took me and a varied bunch of recalcitrants in tow for a tour of the Shakespeare country. From then on, most of my traveling in Great Britain and on the Continent was done under the wing of some such bird. These couriers usually could chirp in several languages and they had apparently been good boys in their youth and read a chapter from Baedeker every night. There was little of historical, artistic or ecclesiastical value that I was allowed to escape. I was luckier than some, of course. I only had one aching foot instead of two.

My first realization that I was marked for special enchantment far beyond that afforded by the British Museum and the Louvre came on the way to Warwick. We all spewed out of our sight-seeing bus in a small village and everyone scattered for an hour of freedom. I went into a little shop that specialized in charming, overpriced bric-a-brac. A very pleasant-looking mans obviously the proprietor, gave my every move in his establishment rapt, exclusive attention, to the great neglect of all his other customers.

I even got the rather disquieting notion that he suspected me of being a shoplifter. Finally, in my embarrassment, with a false show of haughtiness, I started to leave. When I reached the door, he called to me.

"Young lady - please - just a moment." He was obviously perturbed about something.

"There is an item, rather choice," he spoke in a low voice, "that I keep in the back room. I would like to show it to you."

Fascinated by his strange behavior and the sudden conviction that it wasn't a shoplifter he fancied me but a countess, incognito, out bargaining for jewels, I followed him. If his appearance hadn't been so consolingly respectable, I am sure I would have worried when he brushed his other customers out the door.

"I'm closing shop for half an hour," he announced curtly. "Please come back later." They were all so obviously annoyed, however, that I am certain none of them returned.

"Forgive my most discourteous behavior," he pleaded when we were alone. "You see, I have a little girl, just nine, who has a handicap similar to yours. She is only five weeks out of hospital. Would you - could you?"

"Oh, of course," I interrupted him. "I would be delighted to meet her. I was eight when I was hurt. Maybe I can tell her something useful."

He led me through a back door of the shop and into a little walled garden where a small pale child with a doll sat listlessly in a wheel chair. A young woman sat beside her with a book of fairy tales in her lap.

"Elizabeth," the shop proprietor said, "here is an American lady who has come to see Mary."

They gave me tea while I talked to the little girl. I walked up and down the garden on my crutches and even went in for a bit of fancy exhibitionism - holding up my one foot and using the crutches like stilts, a trick that always appeals to children. I passed on some of the things that I learned when I was just about the age of the little English girl. I quoted my old friend, Mrs. Ferris - even to recommending the multiplication tables. I told the little girl that life was going to be lots of fun for her. I am afraid it may not have proved so , but I believed what I said in 1930 and she believed me, too. When I left she laughed and waved her hand and assured me she would have her crutches and be ready to race me to the corner the next time I came through.

Her father ushered me through the shop where he paused long enough to take a delicately beautiful unset cameo from a velvet-lined tray. "From Mary," he said, and handed it to me. "Please take it," he urged, when I hesitated.

Excess generosity is one of the problems a handicapped person faces. I have found that I am more likely to err in refusing than accepting. Seats offered me in crowded cars; special consideration in the queue at a theater; porters rushing through trains to open doors for me; shoppers giving me their turn at a busy counter in a store - and even cameos, presented by strangers. They all pose a problem.

A handicapped person doesn't win any of these on his merit, and frequently he doesn't require any such thoughtfulness. In my childhood and teens, I am sure I was very rude in my constant huffy refusals of any kind of aid. I have grown more mellow, more sensible, and, I believe, more kindly.

Frequently I accept proffered places in crowded buses or trolleys, from tired, elderly men who I know need the seats much more than I. But, according to faultless authority, "It is more blessed to give than to receive." For the most part, I am convinced it is up to the handicapped person graciously to let the giver be blessed.