She parked the electric and entered the grim black pile that was the City Hall and County Building, threaded her way among the cuspidors of the dingy entrance hall, stepped out of the elevator on the floor that held Judge Barton's court: the Girls' Court. The attendant at the door knew her. There was no entering Judge Barton's court as a public place of entertainment. In the ante-room red-eyed girls and shawled mothers were watching the closed door in mingled patience and fear. Girls. Sullen girls, bold girls, frightened girls. Girls who had never heard of the Ten Commandments and who had broken most of them. Girls who had not waited for the apple of life to drop ripe into their laps but had twisted it off the tree and bitten deep into the fruit and found the taste of gall in their mouths. Tear-stained, bedraggled, wretched girls; defiant girls; silk-clad, contemptuous, staring girls. Girls who had rehearsed their rôles, prepared for stern justice in uniform. Girls who bristled with resentment against life, against law, against maternal authority. They did not suspect how completely they were to be disarmed by a small woman with a misleadingly mild face, graying hair, and eyes that--well, it was hard to tell about those eyes. They looked at you--they looked at you and through you.... What was that you had planned to say ... what was that you had.... Oh, for God's sakes, ma, shut up your crying! Between the girls in their sleazy silk stockings and the mothers in their shapeless shawls lay the rotten root of the trouble. New America and the Old World, out of sympathy with each other, uncomprehending, resentful. The girls in the outer room rustled, and twisted, and jerked, and sobbed, and whispered, and shrugged, and scowled; and stared furtively at each other. But the shawled and formless older women stood or sat animal-like in their patience, their eyes on the closed door. Lottie wondered if she could pick Jennie from among them. She even thought of asking for her, but she quickly decided against that. Better to see Emma Barton first. It lacked just five minutes of ten. Lottie nodded to the woman who guarded the door and passed through the little room in which Judge Barton held court, to the private office beyond. Never was less official-looking hall of justice than that little court room. It resembled a more than ordinarily pleasant business office. A long flat table on a platform four or five inches above the floor. Half a dozen chairs ranged about the wall. A vase of spring flowers--jonquils, tulips, mignonette--on the table. Not a carefully planned "woman's touch." Someone was always sending flowers to Judge Barton. She was that kind of woman. You were struck with the absence of official-looking papers, documents, files. All the paraphernalia of red tape was absent.