“Why not sue him?” Mr. Tutt inquired.

“But suppose he didn’t have any money?” replied Tutt disgustedly.

“Then why not have him arrested?” continued Mr. Tutt.  “It’s libelous per se to call a lawyer a shyster.”

“Even if he is one,” supplemented Miss Minerva Wiggin ironically, as she removed her paper cuffs preparatory to lighting the alcohol lamp under the teakettle.  “The greater the truth the greater the libel, you know!”

“And what do you mean by that?” sharply rejoined Tutt.  “You don’t—­”

“No,” replied the managing clerk of Tutt & Tutt.  “I don’t!  Of course not!  And frankly, I don’t know what a shyster is.”

“Neither do I,” admitted Tutt.  “But it sounds opprobrious.  Still, that is a rather dangerous test.  You remember that colored client of ours who wanted us to bring an action against somebody for calling him an Ethiopian!”

“There’s nothing dishonorable in being an Ethiopian,” asserted Miss Wiggin.

“A shyster,” said Mr. Tutt, reading from the Century Dictionary, “is defined as ’one who does business trickily; a person without professional honor; used chiefly of lawyers.’”

“Well?” snapped Tutt.

“Well?” echoed Miss Wiggin.

“H’m!  Well!” concluded Mr. Tutt.

“I nominate for the first pedestal in our Hall of Legal Ill Fame—­Raphael B. Hogan,” announced Tutt, complacently disregarding all innuendoes.

“But he’s a very elegant and gentlemanly person,” objected Miss Wiggin as she warmed the cups.  “My idea of a shyster is a down-at-the-heels, unshaved and generally disreputable-looking police-court lawyer—­preferably with a red nose—­who murders the English language—­and who makes his living by preying upon the ignorant and helpless.”

“Like Finklestein?” suggested Tutt.

“Exactly!” agreed Miss Wiggin.  “Like Finklestein.”

“He’s one of the most honorable men I know!” protested Mr. Tutt.  “My dear Minerva, you are making the great mistake—­common, I confess, to a large number of people—­of associating dirt and crime.  Now dirt may breed crime, but crime doesn’t necessarily breed dirt.”

“You don’t have to be shabby to prey upon the ignorant and helpless,” argued Tutt.  “Some of our most prosperous brethren are the worst sharks out of Sing Sing.”

“That is true!” she admitted, “but tell it not in Gath!”

“A shyster,” began Mr. Tutt, unsuccessfully applying a forced draft to his stogy and then throwing it away, “bears about the same relation to an honest lawyer as a cad does to a gentleman.  The fact that he’s well dressed, belongs to a good club and has his name in the Social Register doesn’t affect the situation.  Clothes don’t make men; they only make opportunities.”

“But why is it,” persisted Miss Wiggin, “that we invariably associate the idea of crime with that of ’poverty, hunger and dirt’?”