“You mean,” he stammered, “that you going into a court-house with that girl?”
“Yes,” she answered; “I make up me mind.”
“An’ then,” he protested heatedly, “my name will be called, an’ I will be mixed up in it! What you talkin’ about, Sue?”
“You’ name won’t be called,” she answered inflexibly. “What you fretting about? If you know, as you say, that you have nothing to do with Maria, you needn’t trouble you’self. It is me bringing her up, not you. Who is to call you’ name?”
Tom looked into her face, and realized that there was no turning her from her purpose. The two were alone in the day-sitting-room; but even if the rest of the family were there, he reflected ruefully, that would hardly assist him.
“I don’t like it,” he muttered dismally.
“Don’t fret about anything,” she cheerfully advised him as he bade her good-night. “You’ name won’t come into the case.”
But Tom left her with a sinking heart.
The eventful day of the case dawned at last, and found Susan and her family in a state of intense excitement. The case was to be tried in the Police Court, a building which had once been a barracks for the Imperial soldiers when troops were stationed in the city of Kingston. The courtyard of this building opened on one hand upon the city’s central park, a large plot of land planted out in umbrageous evergreens and flowering shrubs; on the other hand, it opened upon one of the city’s busiest thoroughfares. Thus on the one side was an oasis of peace and beauty, while in the adjoining street to the west all was squalor and confusion. This street itself was filled with little shops and crowded with clamouring, gesticulating people. A market was there, and the echoes of shrieks of laughter and sudden volleys of abuse sometimes came to the magistrates and lawyers as they transacted their business in the court; but they accepted these minor interruptions as part of the settled order of things, and never complained about them. Carts rattling over the brick pavement, electric cars passing at frequent intervals and incessantly sounding their gongs to warn the careless people out of their way, diminutive venders shouting out the nature and superior quality of their wares—all this, with the inevitable clouds of dust which swept over and enveloped everything, made up the life and activity of the street. And dominating the whole scene stood the weather-worn, ugly, two-storeyed building which to so many thousands of the people was the awe-inspiring symbol of a vague and tremendous power called Law.