“You know I am,” interrupted Rose.

“Well, I say, suppose it’s true.  What’s the use?  Do you think any decent store-keeper on Main Street would risk his reputation by giving a job to a stranded actress that had come here with a rotten show like the one you was with; or that I could have you in my dining-room?  This is a respectable hotel, I tell you.”

He broke off to wave his hand genially to a man who was walking slowly by the door on his way down to the dining-room.

“There!” he went on to Rose.  “That’s what I mean!  That’s Judge Granger of the Supreme Court of this state.  He’s come here regularly for meals, when he ain’t in Springfield, for the last fifteen years.  He’s the biggest man in this county.  Do you suppose he’d stand for it, if I asked him to give his order to a busted actress?”

“Would you stand for it if he did?” demanded Rose.  “If he told you that I was all right and asked you to give me a job, would you do it?”

The proprietor laughed impatiently.  “What’s the good of talking nonsense?” he demanded.  “Yes, I would, if that’ll satisfy you.  But you’d better take the next train for Chicago.  And if ...”  He hesitated, stroked his mustache again with his under-lip, and went on,—­“Oh, I suppose I’m a damned fool, but if a couple of dollars will help you out ...”

“No, thank you,” said Rose.  “I’m going to see the judge.”  And she cut off John Culver’s exclamation of protest by walking out of the office.

Rose went back to the desk, told the clerk she wanted dinner, and forestalled the objection she saw him preparing to make, by laying a dollar bill on the counter.  He even hesitated a little over that, but he took it and gave her a quarter in change.

“That’ll be all right,” he said, and she went the way the judge had gone, down the corridor to the dining-room.  A glance showed her where he sat, and without waiting for the assistance of the head waitress, she chose a chair near the door, facing it, and with her back to the judge.

Those were rather audacious tactics.  Seventy-five cents, in the present state of her finances, was a good deal to squander on a meal.  And the fact that she was openly stalking the judge might lead John Culver to give his honored patron a word of warning.  But Rose didn’t care.  No tactics but the simplest and most direct appealed to her.  When the judge finished his dinner, she would follow him to his office, wherever it might be, walk in with him, and demand a hearing.  If he were forewarned, she would find some other way of getting access to him.

But, whether the proprietor was really ignorant of her plan, or whether the little scene with her in his office had shaken him so that he didn’t care to try conclusions with her again, the judge was left to his fate.  Rose followed him, unmolested, down the corridor and out into the street, across the road and up a flight of outside steps, to the second story of a brick building opposite.