An unofficial smile tempered Miss Blair's austerity. "But go on," she said, with an access of formality by way of atonement for her lapse.

Jean's own quick-changing eyes gleamed over the memory of Amelia's undoing, but it was for an instant only. "It was a dear joke for me," she continued soberly. "Amelia was sore. She had a nasty way of saying things, for all her angel-food, and she hadn't lost her voice that night, I can assure you. I said I was sorry for playing her the trick, but she kept harping on it like a phonograph, and one of our regular shindies followed. It would have ended in talk, like all the rest, if mother hadn't chimed in, but when they both tuned up with the same old song about my being a hoiden and a family disgrace, why, I got mad myself, and told them to clear out. When they didn't budge, I grabbed a Cuban machete that a Rough Rider friend had given me, and went for them."

"What did you mean to do?"

"Only frighten them. I never knew till afterward that I'd really pinked Amelia's arm. Of course, I didn't mean to do anything like that. I swear it."

"And then?"

"Then mother lost her head completely. She tore shrieking downstairs, Amelia after her, and both of them took to the street. First I knew, in came the officer. The rest seems a kind of nightmare to me—the arrest, the station-house cell, the blundering old fool of a magistrate who sent me here. He said he'd had his eye on me for a long time, and that I was incorrigible. Incorrigible! What did he know about it? He couldn't even pronounce the word! What business has such a man with power to spoil a girl's life! He was only a seedy failure as a lawyer, and got his job through politics. That's what sent me here—politics! Mother never intended matters to go this far. I know she didn't, though she doesn't admit it. She wanted to frighten me, but things slipped out of her hands. Think of it! Three years among the Stella Wilkeses for a joke! My God, I can't believe it! I must be dreaming still."

The superintendent ransacked her stock of homilies for an adequate response, but nothing suggested itself. Jean Fanshaw's case refused to fit the routine pigeonholes. She could only remind the girl that it lay with herself to decide whether she would serve out her full term.

"It is possible to earn your parole in a year and a half, remember," she charged, rising. "Bear that constantly in mind."

Jean seemed not 

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