“I think you do,” said Rose thoughtfully, with a steady look he angrily turned away from.  “I think you knew, without any reason at all, just from your instinct and your experience in judging people.  And if you don’t know it that way, I think you can prove it to yourself by common sense.  Do you think it likely that if a girl of my—­appearance and—­manners, had a mind to practise the—­profession you’ve talked about, she would be here in Centropolis, fighting desperately like this, going through humiliations like this, for a chance to be a waitress in Mr. Culver’s dining-room?”

She stopped there and took a good deep breath and waited.  There was a solid minute of silence.  The judge got up out of his chair and began pacing the room with short impatient steps.  He stopped with a jerk two or three times, as if he were about to demolish her with speech, but always gave up the attempt before a word was spoken.

“Oh, I admit it’s a hard case,” he said at last.  “You’ve apparently been a victim of circumstance.  The people down in this part of the country are perhaps narrow.  In the main it’s a good sort of narrowness.  It’s better than the broadness of your cities.  But in an isolated case it may work an injustice.”  Then he wheeled on her.  “But I can’t do anything for you.  Can’t you see that I can’t do anything for you?”

“I don’t see,” said Rose, “why you can’t do what I ask.”

“Have it known,” shouted the judge, “in this town and all over the county, and all over the Supreme Court district, as it would be in another week, that I had gone to John Culver and got a job in his hotel—­the hotel where I go myself, three times a day—­for a girl who got left behind by a stranded comic-opera company?  Now can’t you see?  I’m coming up for re-election in two years.”

Rose drew in a long sigh and for a moment drooped a little.

“Yes, I see,” she said with a rueful little smile.  They were afraid of him, and he was afraid of them.

“I’m sorry about it,” said the judge.  “If there’s anything else I can do ...”  He put his hand tentatively in his pocket.

“No,” Rose said, “that isn’t what I want.  Mr. Culver offered me two dollars to go away.  I suppose you might offer me ten.  But I’m not going.  There is somebody in this town who isn’t afraid of anybody, if I can only find out who that somebody is.”

For a moment the judge looked annoyed; tried to collect his scattered dignity.  But presently a twinkle lighted up in his eye.  Then he smiled.  “You might try Miss Gibbons,” he said.

“Who is she?” Rose asked.

By now the judge was smiling broadly.  Apparently there was something exquisitely humorous in the notion of an encounter between Rose and this lady he’d mentioned.

“She’s lived,” he said, “and practised gossip and millinery, for the last thirty years, up over the drug-store on the next corner.  It’s quite true that there’s nobody in this tier of counties that she’s afraid of.  But I don’t recommend her seriously.  You will get small comfort out of her.”