Hattie Had Smudged Marcia!_

There it lay on her beautiful, helpless whiteness. Hattie's smudge.

* * * * *

It is doubtful, from the way he waited with his soft hat dangling
from soft fingers, if Morton had ever really expected anything else.
Momentary unease gone, he was quiet and Southern and even indolent about
it.

"We'll go to Greenwich first thing in the morning and be married," he
said.

"Sh-h-h!" she whispered to his quietness. "Don't wake Marcia."

"Hattie--" he said, and started to touch her.

"Don't!" she sort of cried under her whisper, but not without noting
that his hand was ready enough to withdraw. "Please--go--now--"

"To-morrow at the station, then. Eleven. There's a train every hour for
Greenwich."

He was all tan to her now, standing there like a blur.

"Yes, Morton, I'll be there. If--please--you'll go now."

"Of course," he said. "Late. Only I--Well, paying the taxi--strapped
me--temporarily. A ten spot--old Hat--would help."

She gave him her purse, a tiny leather one with a patent clasp. Somehow
her fingers were not flexible enough to open it.

His were.

There were a few hours of darkness left, and she sat them out, exactly
as he had left her, on the piano stool, looking at the silence.

Toward morning quite an equinoctial storm swept the city, banging
shutters and signs, and a steeple on 122d Street was struck by
lightning.

And so it was that Hattie's wedding day came up like thunder.

GUILTY

To the swift hiss of rain down soot-greasy window panes and through a
medley of the smells of steam off wet overcoats and a pale stench
of fish, a judge turned rather tired Friday-afternoon eyes upon the
prisoner at the bar, a smallish man in a decent-enough salt-and-pepper
suit and more salt than pepper in his hair and mustache.

"You have heard the charge against you," intoned the judge in the holy
and righteous key of justice about to be administered. "Do you plead
guilty or not guilty?"

"I--I plead guilty of not having told her facts that would have helped
her to struggle against the--the thing--her inheritance."

"You must answer the Court directly. Do you--"

"You see, Your Honor--my little girl--so little--my promise. Yes, yes,
I--I plead guilty of keeping her in ignorance of what she should have
known, but you see, Your Honor, my little gi--"

"Order! Answer to the point. Do you," began the judge again, "plead
guilty or not gu