“What!” protested Tutt incredulously.

“That’s the law,” returned the senior partner.  “A man can call himself what he chooses and change his name as often as he likes—­so long, of course, as he doesn’t do it to defraud.  The mere fact that a statute likewise gives him the right to apply to the courts to accomplish the same result makes no difference.”

“Of course it might make him feel a little more comfortable about it to do it that way,” suggested Tutt.  “Do you know, as long as I’ve practised law in this town I’ve always assumed that one had to get permission to change one’s name.”

“You’ve learned something,” said Mr. Tutt suavely.  “I hope you will put it to good account.  Here’s ‘76 Fed.’  Take it out and console the Fat and Skinny Club with it if you can.”

Mr. Tutt surrendered the volume without apparent regret and Tutt retired to his own office and to the task of soothing the injured feelings of Mr. Sorg.

A simple-minded little man was Tutt, for all his professional shrewdness and ingenuity.  Like many a hero of the battlefield and of the bar, once inside the palings of his own fence he became modest, gentle, even timorous.  For Abigail, his wife, had no illusions about him and did not affect to have any.  To her neither Tutt nor Mr. Tutt was any such great shakes.  Had Tutt dared to let her know of many of the schemes which he devised for the profit or safety of his clients she would have thought less of him still; in fact, she might have parted with him forever.  In a sense Mrs. Tutt was an exacting woman.  Though she somewhat reluctantly consented to view the hours from nine a.m. to five p.m. in her husband’s day as belonging to the law, she emphatically regarded the rest of the twenty-four hours as belonging to her.

The law may be, as Judge Holmes has called it, “a jealous mistress,” but in the case of Tutt it was not nearly so jealous as his wife.  So Tutt was compelled to walk the straight-and-narrow path whether he liked it or not.  On the whole he liked it well enough, but there were times—­usually in the spring—­when without being conscious of what was the matter with him he mourned his lost youth.  For Tutt was only forty-eight and he had had a grandfather who had lived strenuously to upward of twice that age.  He was vigorous, sprightly, bright-eyed and as hard as nails, even if somewhat resembling in his contours the late Mr. Pickwick.  Mrs. Tutt was tall, spare, capable and sardonic.  She made Tutt comfortable, but she no longer appealed to his sense of romance.  Still she held him.  As the playwright hath said “It isn’t good looks they want, but good nature; if a warm welcome won’t hold them, cold cream won’t.”