riodical visits to the office, ostensibly to see
whether or not it was properly cleaned and the windows washed, but in
reality--or at least so Tutt suspected--to find out whether the
personnel was entirely suitable for a firm of their standing and
particularly for a junior partner of his susceptibilities.

But she never discovered anything to give her the slightest cause for
alarm. The dramatis personae of the offices of Tutt & Tutt were
characteristic of the firm, none of their employees--except Miss
Sondheim, the tumultous-haired lady stenographer--and Willie, the office
boy, being under forty years of age.

When not engaged in running errands or fussing over his postage-stamp
album, Willie spent most of his time teasing old Scraggs, the scrivener,
an unsuccessful teetotaler. A faint odor of alcohol emanated from the
cage in which he performed his labors and lent an atmosphere of
cheerfulness to what might otherwise have seemed to Broadway clients an
unsympathetic environment, though there were long annual periods during
which he was as sober as a Kansas judge. The winds of March were apt,
however, to take hold of him. Perhaps it was the spring in his case
also.

The backbone of the establishment was Miss Minerva Wiggin. In every law
office there is usually some one person who keeps the shop going.
Sometimes it is a man. If so, he is probably a sublimated stenographer
or law clerk who, having worked for years to get himself admitted to the
bar, finds, after achieving that ambition, that he has neither the
ability nor the inclination to brave the struggle for a livelihood by
himself. Perchance as a youth he has had visions of himself arguing test
cases before the Court of Appeals while the leaders of the bar hung upon
his every word, of an office crowded with millionaire clients and
servile employees, even as he is servile to the man for whom he labors
for a miserly ten dollars a week.

His ambition takes him by the hand and leads him to high places, from
which he gazes down into the land of his future prosperity and
greatness. The law seems a mysterious, alluring, fascinating profession,
combining the romance of the drama with the gratifications of the
intellect. He springs to answer his master's bell; he sits up until all
hours running down citations and making extracts from opinions; he
rushes to court and answers the calendar and sometimes carries the
lawyer's brief case and attends him throughout a trial. Thre