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THAT ROYLE GIRL

cried at the judge. "Gentlemen of the jury, he has a home in Massachusetts which was burned in Queen Anne's war. That was about 1708, if you don't know; I didn't. But don't worry over him; his home was built again in 1722; his family's had it ever since, ready for him when he came. . . ."

Calvin felt his face aflame.

"You must confine yourself to answering the question," he heard the judge interfering in his behalf.

"I'm trying to answer him, judge. I know what he means. He means, how can I, with the sort of home he's been showing you all, how can I dream a decent thing about any one and get an ambition for something big when I've been living around, under different names, in hotels and flats and being flung out of them? Where's my home? he asked me once; and that's what he means now.

"Where I live, Mr. Clarke, isn't so old as where you live; it doesn't go back to Queen Anne's war or even John Adams' administration; but it's a whole lot bigger place; it's Chicago. When you didn't find any family portraits of people who'd fought with Knox or at Antietam in my flat, you figured I couldn't be any good; I couldn't get any big idea. Well, I never spent much time looking at the walls of that flat; I didn't live there. There's a wall I've looked at, though, that's got bigger names than any Clarke—Shubert, Beethoven, Wagner, and Mozart in stone letters; and inside the wall, where anybody can go for seventy-five cents, the finest orchestra in the world plays the greatest music; and the program tells you about it, if you need to know. That's where I got my ambition for Ket, Mr. Clarke!"

The judge interrupted her, Calvin realized, but short of physically silencing her, he could not have stopped her, and the judge had not really desired it.