htened up with some relief. "I have only to ask, then, for a
note to the lady to that effect, that my own explanation already given
may be corroborated."

Strong began to look alert and suspicious at this.

"Views coincide?" he said. "What two views could there be? What does
she say brought her here?"

"She's got an idea that she's got first claim on the place," said the
Judge, plumping suddenly into colloquial diction. He had a trick of
doing so when he got down to business. It would have had something the
effect of candid confession, produced by a maiden's plain-hair days
alternated with her waved-hair days, had not the grandiloquence of
tone and manner become so far second nature that it ran through both
his dialects, and lessened the contrast. "You can't always make a
woman see sense."

Strong looked suspiciously at him a few seconds. "Well, I'll go see
her this evening," he said. "Where's she staying?"

"That is a totally superfluous tax on your time, my dear Strong," said
the Judge, leaning persuasively across the books again. "I have here
a mere formal line, stating that Coakley is the regularly engaged
teacher of the school, and will begin next Monday; your signature
to it--Green's and mine are already there--will be all that is
necessary." He pushed pen and ink toward Strong with his exaggerated
air of courtesy.

"Oh, I'm not going to sign things that way, you know. I'll go see
her." He turned and drew his proof-sheets to him with an air of
dismissal.

The Judge stood up very straight, expanded his chest, and folded his
arms according to his conception of the Virginian manner. "Am I to
understand, sir, that you question my veracity?"

"I don't question anything," said the young man, impatiently. "I'll
know what I'm talking about when I've seen her."

"Permit me to suggest, sir"--the Judge was approaching his platform
manner--"permit me to suggest, sir, that Mr. Green and myself
constitute a majority of the board, and Mr. Green, sir--Uncle Billy
Green--has confidence in my honor, and will sustain my action,
whatever line you may be persuaded to adopt."

"Oh, as to that," said Strong, exaggerating his crispness of manner in
protest against the Judge's staginess, "I'm clerk of the board, and
you can't hold a legal meeting nor pay a salary without me. What's the
reason you don't want me to see her?"

Judge Garvey unfolded his arms, fell back a step, and dropped easily
into the sonorous declamation th