"Well, not as many times as Snawdor says he has. Snawdor's that jealous he don't want me to have no gentlemen visitors. When I see the truant officer or the clock-man comin', I just keep out of sight to avoid trouble."

The judge's eyes twinkled, then grew stern. "In the meanwhile," he said, "Nancy is growing up in ignorance. What sort of a woman are you to let a child go as ragged and dirty as this one and to refuse her an education?"

"Well, schools ain't what they wuz when me an' you wuz young," Mrs.

Snawdor said argumentatively. "They no more'n git a child there than they want to cut out their palets or put spectacles on her. But honest, Judge, the truth of it is I can't spare Nance to go to school. I got a job scrubbin' four nights in the week at the post-office, an' I got to have some help in the daytime. I leave it to you if I ain't."

"That's neither here nor there," said the judge. "It is your business to have her at school every morning and to see that she submits to the regulations. You are an able-bodied woman and have an able-bodied husband. Why don't you move into a decent house in a decent neighborhood?"

"There ain't nothin' the matter with our neighborhood. If you'd jes' git 'em to fix the house up some. The roof leaks something scandalous."

"Who is your landlord?"

"Well, they tell me _he_ is," said Mrs. Snawdor, pointing a malicious finger at Mr. Clarke. This _coup d'etat_ caused considerable diversion, and the judge had to call the court sharply to order.

"Is that your husband in the rear of the room?" he asked Mrs. Snawdor.

"Law, no; that's Mr. Burks, our boarder. I begged Snawdor to come, but he's bashful."

"Well, Mr. Burks, will you step forward and tell us what you know of this little girl?"

Uncle Jed cleared his throat, made a pa.s.s at the place where his front hair used to be, and came forward.

"Have you known this child long?" asked the judge.

"Eleven years, going on twelve," said Uncle Jed, with a twinkle in his small eyes, "me an' her grandpa fought side by side in the battle of Chickasaw Bluffs."

"So she comes of fighting stock," said the judge. "Do you consider her incorrigible?"

"Sir?"

"Do you think her stepmother is able to control her?"

Uncle Jed looked a trifle embarra.s.sed.

"Well, Mrs. Snawdor ain't whut you might say regular in her method.

Sometimes she's kinder rough on Nance, and then again she's a heap sight too easy."

"That's a G.o.d's truth!" Mrs. Snawdor agreed fervently from the rear.

"Then you do not consider it altogether the child's fault?"

"No, sir, I can't say as I do. She jes' gits the signals mixed sometimes, that's all."

The judge smiled.

"So you think if she understood the signals, she'd follow them?"

Uncle Jed's face became very earnest as he laid his hand on Nance's head.

"I believe if this here little la.s.s was to once git it into her head that a thing was right, she'd do it if it landed her where it landed her paw, at the foot of a forty-foot embankment with a engine a-top of her."

"That's a pretty good testimony to her character," said the judge. "It's our business, then, to see that she gets more definite instructions as to the traffic laws of life. Nance, you and Dan step up here again."

The children stood before him, breathing hard, looking him straight in the face.

"You have both been breaking the law. It's a serious thing to be up in court. It is usually the first step on the down grade. But I don't believe either of you have been wholly to blame. I am going to give you one more chance and put you both on probation to Mrs. Purdy, to whom you are to report once a week. Is Mrs. Purdy in the room?"

An elderly little lady slipped forward and stood behind them with a hand on the shoulder of each. Nance did not dare look around, but there was something comforting and rea.s.suring in that fat hand that lay on her shoulder.

"One more complaint against either of you," cautioned the judge impressively, "and it will be the house of reform. If your families can't make you behave, the State can. But we don't want to leave it to the family or the State; we want to leave it to you. I believe you can both make good, but you'll have to fight for it."

Nance's irregular features broke into a smile. It was a quick, wide smile and very intimate.

"Fight?" she repeated, with a quizzical look at the judge. "I thought that was what we was pinched fer."

CHAPTER V

ON PROBATION

For a brief period Nance Molloy walked the paths of righteousness. The fear of being "took up" proved a salutary influence, but permanent converts are seldom made through fear of punishment alone. She was trying by imitation and suggestion to grope her way upward, but the light she climbed by was a borrowed light which swung far above her head and threw strange, misleading shadows across her path. The law that allowed a man to sell her fire-crackers and then punished her for firing them off, that allowed any pa.s.ser-by to kick her stone off the hop-scotch square and punished her for hurling; the stone after him, was a baffling and difficult thing to understand.

At school it was no better. The truant officer said she must go every day, yet when she got there, there was no room for her. She had to sit in the seat with two other little girls who bitterly resented the intrusion.

"You oughtn't to be in this grade anyhow!" declared one of them. "A girl ought to be in the primer that turns her letters the wrong way."

"Well, my letters spell the words right," said Nance hotly, "an' that's more'n yours do, Pie-Face!"

Whereupon the girl stuck out her tongue, and Nance promptly shoved her off the end of the seat, with the result that her presence was requested in the office at the first recess.

"If you would learn to make your letters right, the girls would not tease you," said the princ.i.p.al, kindly. "Why do you persist in turning them the wrong way?"

Now Nance had learned to write by copying the inscriptions from the reverse side of the cathedral windows, and she still believed the cathedral was right. But she liked the princ.i.p.al and she wanted very much to get a good report, so she gave in.

"All right," she said good-naturedly, "I'll do 'em your way. An' ef you ketch me fightin' agin, I hope you'll lick h.e.l.l outen me!"

The princ.i.p.al, while decrying its forcible expression, applauded her good intention, and from that time on took special interest in her.

Nance's greatest drawback these days was Mrs. Snawdor. That worthy lady, having her chief domestic prop removed and finding the household duties resting too heavily upon her own shoulders, conceived an overwhelming hatred for the school, the unknown school-teacher, and the truant officer, for whom she had hitherto harbored a slightly romantic interest.

"I ain't got a mite of use for the whole lay-out," she announced in a sweeping condemnation one morning when Nance was reminding her for the fourth time that she had to have a spelling book. "They' re forever wantin' somethin'. It ain't no use beginnin' to humor 'em. Wasn't they after me to put specs on Fidy last week? I know their tricks, standin' in with eye-doctors an' dentists! An' here I been fer goin' on ten years, tryin' to save up to have my own eye-teeth drawed an' decent ones put in.

Snawdor promised when we got married that would be his first present to me. Well, if I ever get 'em, they _will_ be his first present."

"Teacher says you oughtn't to leave the milk settin' uncovered like that; it gits germans in it," said Nance.