“My boy has been carefully brought up,” she said; “he is a gentleman, and he will not submit to association with his inferiors.  His grandfather would not have done so before him.”

The judge quailed, but it was an uncompromising quailing—­a surrender of the flesh, not the spirit.

“My dear lady,” he began in his softest voice, “your son is a fine, spirited fellow, but he is a boy, and he doesn’t care a—­a—­pardon me, madam—­a continental whether anybody else is his inferior or not.  No wholesome boy does.  He doesn’t know the meaning of the word—­nor does Tom—­and I shan’t be the one to teach him.  Amos Burr’s son is a clever, hard-working boy, and if he will take an education from me, he shall have it.”

The judge was firm.  Mrs. Webb was firm also.

The judge assumed his legal manner; she assumed her hereditary one.

“It is folly to educate a person above his station,” she said.

“Men make their stations, madam,” replied the judge.

He sat in his great arm-chair and looked at her with reverent but determined eyes.  His head was slightly bent, in deference to her dissenting voice, and his words wavered, but his will did not.  In his attitude his respect for her sexually and individually was expressed, but he had argued the opposing interests in his mind, and his decision was judicial.

“I am deeply pained, my dear lady,” he said, “but I cannot turn the boy away.”

Mrs. Webb did not reply.  She gathered up her stiff skirt and departed with folded lips.

After she had gone the judge paced his study nervously for a half-hour, giving uncertain glances towards the hall door, as if he expected the advent of an incarnate thunderbolt.  In the afternoon he sent over a bottle of his best Madeira as a peace-offering.  Mrs. Webb acknowledged the Madeira, not the truce.  The following day General Battle called upon the judge and requested in half-hearted tones the withdrawal of Amos Burr’s son.  He looked excited and somewhat alarmed, and the judge recognised the hand of the player.

“My dear Tom Battle,” he said soothingly, “you do not wish the poor child any harm.”

“’Fore God, I don’t, George,” stammered the general.

“He’s a quiet, unoffending lad.”

The general fingered his limp cravat with agitated plump fingers.  “I never passed him on the road in my life that he didn’t touch his hat,” he admitted, “and once he took a stone out of the gray mare’s shoe.”

“He has a brain and he has ambition.  Think what it is to be born in a lower class and to have a mind above it.”

The general’s great chest trembled.

“I wouldn’t injure the little chap for the world George; on my soul, I wouldn’t.”

“I know it, Tom.”

“My own great-grandfather Battle raised himself, George.”

The judge waved the fact aside as insignificant.

“Of course, Mrs. Webb is a woman,” he said with sexual cynicism, “and her views are naturally prejudiced.  You can’t expect a woman to look at things as coolly as we do, Tom.”