The milky-fleshed, not highly sensitized, pinkly clean creature of an innocence born mostly of ignorance and slow perceptions, who that morning had risen sweet from eleven hours of unrestless sleep beside a mother whose bed she had never missed to share, suddenly here in slatternliness! A draggled night bird caught in the aviary of night court, lips a deep vermilion scar of rouge, hair out of scallop and dragging at the pins, the too ready laugh dashing itself against what must be owned a hiccough. Something congenital and sleeping subcutaneously beneath the surface of her had scratched through. She was herself, strangely italicized. A judge regarded her not unkindly. There were two of him, she would keep thinking, one merging slightly into his prototype. She stood, gazing up. Around her swam the court-room--rows of faces; comings and goings within her railed area. And heat--the dizzying, the exciting heat--and the desire to shake off the some one at her elbow. That some one was up before her now, in a chair beside the judge, and his voice was as far away as Archie Sensenbrenner's. "And she says to me, she says, your Honor, 'Got a girl?'" "Were those her exact words to you?" "Yes, your Honor." "Proceed." "And I says to her, I says, 'No,' and then she comes up close and says to me, she says, 'Buy me a drink?'" "Were those her exact words?" "Yes, your Honor, as near as I can remember." "Go on." "And I says to her, 'Where do you want to go?' and she says to me, giving me a wink, 'Cora's.'" "Cora's?" "Yes, your Honor; the Cora Jones mulatto woman that was cleaned out last week." "She suggested that you accompany her to the house of the Jones woman?" "Beg pardon, your Honor?" "She suggested this resort?" "Yes, your Honor. 'Cora Jones,' she said." Through the smoke of her bewilderment something irate stirred within Miss Schump, a smouldering sense of anger that burst out into a brief tongue of flame. "You! You! You're no amachure! Cora Jones! Cora Kinealy! Go tell it to the great Danes! Say it again! Gimme leave! Gimme leave!" The immediate peremptoriness of the gavel set her to blinking, but did not silence. "'Gimme leave,' was what I said--" "Come to order in the court!" "Aw!" A new presence at her elbow grasped her sharply. She subsided, but still muttering. "Proceed, officer." "And then, when she starts off with me, I says to her, I says, 'You're under arrest,' and brought her over." "That'll do." "Does the defendant wish to take the chair?" From her elbow, "His Honor asks if you want to state your case." "Huh?" "Do you wish to state your case from the witness-chair? Since you did not employ counsel, do you wish to state your own case?" "Nit." "Look up here, my girl. I am the judge, trying to help you." "Aw!" "Is this your first offense?" "Well, it's my offense, ain't it?" "Address the court properly. Are you intoxicated or only slightly dizzy?" "He lied about Cora Kinealy. He lied--that little skunk lied."