"Come on, let's go up to Rector's for a little tango, and see some real life...."
The magistrate who had heard it tapped his pen on the desk, and looked quizzically at the matron.
"They are doubtless preparing some reform legislation for the suffrage platform, Mrs. Grey, and I have inadvertently delayed the millennium. Ah, a pity!"
Burke was impatient for the calling of his own case. He was tired. He would have been hungry had he not been so nauseated by the sickening environment. He longed for the fresh air; even the snowstorm was better than this.
But his turn had not come. The next to be called was another answer to his mental question.
A young woman with a blackened eye and a bleeding cheek was brought in by a fat, jolly officer, who led a burly, sodden man with him.
The charge was quarreling and destroying the furniture of a neighbor in whose flat the fight had taken place.
"Who started it?" asked the magistrate.
"She did, your honor. She ain't never home when I wants my vittles cooked, and she blows my money so there ain't nothing in the house to eat for meself. She's always startin' things, and she did this time when I tells her to come on home...."
"Just a minute," interrupted the magistrate. "What is the cause of this, little woman? Who struck you on the eye?"