.

"Probation officer," came the answer.

Jarvis watched her with passionate interest. He noted her low-voiced
answers to the judge's questions about the girl in hand. The curiosity
seekers in the audience could not hear, no matter how they craned their
necks. He watched her calm smile as she turned to take the girl off into
her own office. He made up his mind to talk with her before the
night was over.

Case followed case as the night wore on. It seemed to Jarvis that this
bedraggled line had neither beginning nor end. He saw it winding through
this place night after night, year after year, the old-timers and the
new recruits. Uptown reputable citizens slept peacefully in their beds;
this was no concern of theirs. He was no better than the rest, with his
precious preaching about the brotherhood of man. What the body politic
needed was a surgeon to cut away this abscess, eating its youth
and strength.

The screams of a girl who had just been given a sentence to Bedford
startled him out of his thoughts. She pleaded and cried, she tried to
throw herself at the judge's feet, but the policeman dragged her out,
the crowd craning forward with avid interest. She was the last case
before the court adjourned. Jarvis leaned across the rail and asked the
probation officer if he might speak to her.

"Perhaps you will walk along with me toward my home?" she suggested. He
gladly assented. In a few moments she came out, hatted and ready for the
street. She looked keenly at this tall, serious youth who had so
unexpectedly arraigned the court.

"My name is Jarvis Jocelyn," he began. "There are so many things I want
to ask you about."

"I shall be glad to tell you what I can," she said quietly.

"Have you been in this work long?"

"Eleven years."

"Good God! how can you be so calm? How can you look so hopeful?"

"Because I am hopeful. In all the thousands of cases I have known I have
never once lost hope. When I do, my work is over."

"You're wonderful!" he exclaimed.

"No, I am reasonable. I don't expect the impossible. I am glad of every
inch of ground gained. I don't demand an acre. If one girl is rescued
out of twenty----"

"But why does it need to be at all?" Jarvis interrupted her.

"Why does disease need to be? Why does unhappiness need to be, or war,
or the money-lust that will one day wreck us? We only know that these
things are. Our business is to set about doing what we can."

"One girl out of twenty," he