There he developed quite a flair for the law books in Judge Manners's
laddered library. Miss Manners found him there, reading, on stomach and
elbows, his heels waving in the air.
Judge Manners talked with him and discovered a legal turn of mind, and
there followed some veranda talk of educating and removing him from his
environment. But that very afternoon Jason did a horrid thing. It was no
more than he had seen about him all his life. Not as much. He kissed the
little pig-tailed daughter of the laundress and pursued her as she ran
shrieking to her mother's apron. That was all, but his defiant head and
the laundress's chance knowledge of his Juvenile Court record did for
him.
At six o'clock that evening, with a five-dollar bill of which he made a
spitball for the judge's departing figure down the station platform, he
was shipped back to Hanscha. Secretly he was relieved. Life was easier
in the tenement under the shadow of Brooklyn Bridge. The piece of its
arch which he could see from his window was even beautiful, a curve of a
stone into some beyond.
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