Charley leaned over the railing to combat that as Lottie flew downstairs. "There is no higher duty than that of self-expression."
"Gabble-gabble!" laughed Lottie, at the vestibule door.
"Coward!" shouted Charley over the railing.
CHAPTER X
When she came out the fog was beginning to lift over the lake and there was even an impression of watery lemon-coloured sunshine behind the bank of gray. Lottie's spirits soared. As she stepped into the swaying old electric there came over her a little swooping sensation of freedom. It was good to be going about one's business thus, alone. No one to say, "Slower! Not so fast!" No one to choose the maelstrom of State and Madison streets as the spot in which to ask her opinion as to whether this sample of silk matched this bit of cloth. A licorice lane of smooth black roadway ahead. Down Hyde Park Boulevard and across to Drexel. Down the long empty stretch of that fine avenue at a spanking speed—spanking, that is, for the ancient electric whose inside protested at every revolution of the wheels. She negotiated the narrows of lower Michigan Avenue and emerged into the gracious sweep of that street as it widened at Twelfth. She always caught her breath a little at the spaciousness and magnificence of those blocks between Twelfth and Randolph. The new Field Columbian museum, a white wraith, rose out of the lake mist at her right. Already it was smudged with the smoke of the I. C. engines. A pity, Lottie thought. She always felt civic when driving down Michigan. On one side Grant Park and the lake beyond; on the other the smart shops. You had to keep eyes ahead, but now and then, out of the corner of them, you caught tantalising glimpses of a scarlet velvet evening wrap in the window of the Blackstone shop; a chic and trickily simple poiret twill in Vogue; the glint of silver as you flashed past a jeweller's; the sooted façade of the Art Institute. She loved it. It exhilarated her. She felt young, and free, and rather important. The sombre old house on Prairie ceased to dominate her for the time. What fun it would be to stay down for lunch with Emma Barton—wise, humourous, understanding Emma Barton. Maybe they could get hold of Winnie Steppler, too. Then, later, she might prowl around looking at the new cloth dresses for spring.
Well, she couldn't. That was all there was to it.
She parked the electric and entered the grim black pile that was the City Hall and County Building, threaded her way among the cuspidors of the dingy entrance hall, stepped out of the elevator on the floor that held Judge Barton's court: the Girls' Court. The attendant at the door knew her. There was no entering Judge Barton's court as a public place of entertainment. In the ante-room red-eyed girls and shawled mothers were watching the closed door in mingled patience and fear. Girls. Sullen girls, bold girls, frightened girls. Girls who had never heard of the Ten Commandments and who had broken most of them. Girls who had not waited for the apple of life to drop ripe into their laps but had twisted it off the tree and bitten deep into the fruit and found the taste of gall in their mouths. Tear-stained, bedraggled, wretched girls; defiant girls; silk-clad, contemptuous, staring girls. Girls who had rehearsed their rôles, prepared for stern justice in uniform. Girls who bristled with resentment against life, against law, against maternal authority. They did not suspect how completely they were to be disarmed by a small woman with a misleadingly mild face, graying hair, and eyes that—well, it was hard to tell about those eyes. They looked at you—they looked at you and through you.... What was that you had planned to say ... what was that you had.... Oh, for God's sakes, ma, shut up your crying! Between the girls in their sleazy silk stockings and the mothers in their shapeless shawls lay the rotten root of the trouble. New America and the Old World, out of sympathy with each other, uncomprehending, resentful. The girls in the outer room rustled, and twisted, and jerked, and sobbed, and whispered, and shrugged, and scowled; and stared furtively at each other. But the shawled and formless older women stood or sat animal-like in their patience, their eyes on the closed door.
Lottie wondered if she could pick Jennie from among them. She even thought of asking for her, but she quickly decided against that. Better to see Emma Barton first.
It lacked just five minutes of ten. Lottie nodded to the woman who guarded the door and passed through the little room in which Judge Barton held court, to the private office beyond. Never was less official-looking hall of justice than that little court room. It resembled a more than ordinarily pleasant business office. A long flat table on a platform four or five inches above the floor. Half a dozen chairs ranged about the wall. A vase of spring flowers—jonquils, tulips, mignonette—on the table. Not a carefully planned "woman's touch." Someone was always sending flowers to Judge Barton. She was that kind of woman. You were struck with the absence of official-looking papers, documents, files. All the paraphernalia of red tape was absent.
Judge Barton sat in the cubby-hole of an office just beyond this, a girl stenographer at her elbow. Outside the great window the City Hall pigeons strutted and purled. Bright-eyed and alert as an early robin, the judge looked up as Lottie came in. She took Lottie's hand in her own firm fingers.