The girl glanced casually at the clerk's dapper dignity, and resumed her
level examination of Judge Mann. "I am Callista Blake."
Judge Mann opened the record book and wrote: _State vs. Blake, Dec. 7,
1959_. Eighteen days to Christmas and he still hadn't bought that Diesel
train for David, his brother Jack's youngest.... The Blake girl sat
down, Warner on her other side where his bulk might partly shield her
from the assault of eyes. She moved with grace, the deformity a nothing;
the disturbing grace of a wild thing--a cat, a snake, a soaring bird,
who makes never one waste motion but appears to flow with no instant of
transition known. On the scratch-pad Mann's pencil labored through the
fussiness of Old English script:
Which is the Clerk?