Her very appearance gave the place tone—­neutralized the faint odor of alcohol from the cage.  For in truth she was a fine-looking woman.  Had she been costumed by a Fifth Avenue dressmaker and done her coiffure differently she would have been pretty.  Because she drew her gray hair straight back from her low forehead and tied it in a knob on the back of her head, wore paper cuffs and a black dress, she looked nearer fifty than forty-one, which she was.  Two hundred dollars would have taken twenty years off her apparent age—­a year for every ten dollars; but she would not have looked a particle less a lady.

Her duties were ambiguous.  She was always the first to arrive at the office and was the only person permitted to open the firm mail outside of its members.  She overlooked the books that Scraggs kept and sent out the bills.  She kept the key to the cash box and had charge of the safe.  She made the entries in the docket and performed most of the duties of a regular managing clerk.  She had been admitted to the bar.  She checked up the charge accounts and on Saturdays paid off the office force.  In addition to all these things she occasionally took a hand at a brief, drew most of the pleadings, and kept track of everything that was done in the various cases.

But her chief function, one which made her invaluable was that of receiving clients who came to the office, and in the first instance ascertaining just what their troubles were; and she was so sympathetic and at the same time so sensible that many a stranger who casually drifted in and would otherwise just as casually have drifted out again remained a permanent fixture in the firm’s clientele.  Scraggs and William adored her in spite of her being an utter enigma to them.  She was quiet but businesslike, of few words but with a latent sense of humor that not infrequently broke through the surface of her gravity, and she proceeded upon the excellent postulate that everyone with whom she came in contact was actuated by the highest sense of honor.  She acted as a spiritual tonic to both Mr. Tutt and Tutt—­especially to the latter, who was the more in need of it.  If they were ever tempted to stray across the line of professional rectitude her simple assumption that the thing couldn’t be done usually settled the matter once and for all.  On delicate questions Mr. Tutt frankly consulted her.  Without her, Tutt & Tutt would have been shysters; with her they were almost respectable.  She received a salary of three thousand dollars a year and earned double that amount, for she served where she loved and her first thought was of Tutt & Tutt.  If you can get a woman like that to run your law office do not waste any time or consideration upon a man.  Her price is indeed above rubies.

Yet even Miss Wiggin could not keep the shadow of the vernal equinox off the simple heart of the junior Tutt.  She had seen it coming for several weeks, had scented danger in the way Tutt’s childish eye had lingered upon Miss Sondheim’s tumultous black hair and in the rather rakish, familiar way he had guided the ladies who came to get divorces out to the elevator.  And then there swam into his life the beautiful Mrs. Allison, and for a time Tutt became not only hysterically young again, but—­well, you shall see.