Page:The Rejuvenation Of Miss Semaphore.pdf/216

 CHAPTER XXI.

AT THE ARROW STREET POLICE COURT.

Nervous people are generally too early, and on the fatal Monday morning Miss Prudence Semaphore, who was still weak and ill, but meantime had found comparative repose in her quiet and obscure lodgings, presented herself at the door of the Arrow Street Police Court almost as soon as it was opened. She was dressed all in black, and with her white face and long veil looked like a newly made widow.

The baby farming case had excited great interest in the neighbourhood, where "good Mrs. Brown" was a well-known personage, and though three cases stood before it on the list, already dirty drabs from the surrounding alleys, with still dirtier infants clasped in their arms, had gathered on the pavement in hope of seeing the prisoner and witnesses arrive.