essed little mouse of a girl, who
did not seem to understand the conversation.

"Well, then, I take it you will be guided in your actions about your
estate by the advice of your niece's guardian, whom I shall appoint."

He explained to them what a trust company was, and said that he hoped to
get the Washington Trust Company to undertake the guardianship of the
little girl. Then he dismissed them, appointing another meeting a week
hence when they were to return for final settlement of the matter. So
they left the judge's chambers. The girl neither dropped a curtesy, as
the judge would have thought suitable, nor gave him another smile, nor
even opened her lips. She faded out of his chambers after her black aunt
like a pale winter shadow.

The judge thought she showed a deplorable lack of breeding. He was
conscious that he had probably saved a fortune for the girl by all the
pains he was taking in this matter and felt that at least common
politeness was his due. But one was never paid for these things except
by a sense of duty generously performed. What was duty? And off the
judge went into another thorny speculation that would have made Bright,
Seagrove, and Bright laugh, and they were not inclined to laugh either
at or with Judge Orcutt these days. For in the words of the junior
member, this old maid of a probate judge had cut them out of the fattest
little piece of graft the office had seen in a twelvemonth! If judges
had been elective in the good old Commonwealth of M----, Judge Orcutt's
chances of reelection would have been slim, for Bright, Seagrove, and
Bright had strange underground connections with the politicians then
governing the city. Perhaps the poet in the judge would have rejoiced at
such a misadventure and profited thereby. As it was, whenever Bright,
Seagrove, and Bright had business in the probate court, which was not
often, they got other lawyers to represent them. Even "eminent counsel"
shrink from appearing before a judge who knows their real character.

VI

Adelle was not really unresponsive to the judge's kindness. She liked
the polite old gentleman,--old to fourteen because of the grizzled
mustache,--and was for her deeply impressed by her visits to the probate
judge's chambers. It was the first real event in her pale life, that and
her uncle's funeral, which seemed closely related. They made the date
from which she could reckon herself a person. What impressed her more
than the auster