“Hold on a minute, Judge,” Mr. Curd was shaking his whity-grey head in dissent. “I've taken up a lot of your valuable time already, and still it would seem like I haven't succeeded in getting this affair all straight in your mind. Bigger & Quigley are not going to represent me. They're going to represent Luella.” He spoke as one stating an accepted and easily understood fact, yet at the words Judge Priest reared back as far as his chair would let him go and his ruddy cheeks swelled out with the breath of amazement. “Do you mean to tell me,” he demanded, “that you ain't the plaintiff here?” “Why, Judge Priest,” answered Mr. Curd, “you didn't think for a minute, did you, that I'd come into court seeking to blacken my wife's good name? She's been thoughtless, maybe, but I know she don't mean any harm by it, and besides look how young she is. It's her, of course, that's asking for this divorce--I thought you understood about that from the beginning.” Still in his posture of astonishment, Judge Priest put another question and put it briskly: “Might it be proper fur me to ask on what grounds this lady is suin' you fur a divorce?” A wave of dull red ran up old Mr. Curd's throat and flooded his shamed face to the hair line. “On two grounds,” he said--“non-support and drunkenness.” “Non-support?” “Yes; I haven't been able to take care of her lately as I should like to, on account of my business difficulties and all.” “But look here at me, Lysandy Curd--you ain't no drunkard. You never was one. Don't tell me that!” “Well, now, Judge Priest,” argued Mr. Curd, “you don't know about my private habits, and even if I haven't been drinking in public up to now, that's no sign I'm not fixing to start in doing so. Besides which my keeping silent shows that I admit to everything, don't it? Well, then?” He stood up. “Well, I reckon that's all. I won't be detaining you any longer. I'm much obliged to you, Judge, and I wish you good-day, sir.” For once Judge Priest forgot his manners. He uttered not a syllable, but only stared through his spectacles in stunned and stricken silence while Mr. Curd passed out into the hallway, gently closing the door behind him. Then Judge Priest vented his emotions in a series of snorts. In modern drama what is technically known as the stage aside has gone out of vogue; it is called old-fashioned. Had a latter-day playwright been there then, he would have resented the judge's thoughtlessness in addressing empty space. Nevertheless that was exactly what the judge did.