style="font-size:15px;"> Use his library, indeed! Mrs. Tarbell would have been as likely to go to the Vatican and ask Pope Leo for the loan of a few works contra hæreticos. Why had she and her brother ever come to the Land and Water Company's building? The idea of meeting the Honorable Pope every day, of every day beholding his portly figure, statesman-like features, and lion mane, and acknowledging his bland bows and salutations, was inexpressibly odious. And, what was worse, Mr. Pope continued to flourish like a green bay-tree, or like the proprietors of a patent medicine or a blackguard newspaper, or any other comparison you please. Feet tramped along the hall, hands knocked at his door, lips innumerable whispered into his ears, and Mrs. Tarbell sat and looked at her sign, wondering what had become of all the women who were to have employed her. She had not said, "Walk in, madam," to one of them; and Mr. Juddson's clients all regarded her as if she were a curiosity.
Mrs. Tarbell looked, in fact, like the president of a Dorcas society or a visitor of a church hospital. She had pleasing features, dark hair, slightly touched with gray, as became a lawyer of thirty-five, and dignified manners. She dressed very plainly in a black dress with just one row of broad trimming down the front, and, though she felt that it was an abuse of authority, she drew her hair straight back from her forehead. This question of her hair had given her some little anxiety, and it had cost her some time to decide what kind of hat or bonnet she should wear. Alexander said she might use her riding-hat for the sake of economy, but she had decided on a tweed walking-hat, which could be taken off very quickly in the court-room. For, whatever she might do in church, it was now impossible for her to remain covered before the bench of judges.
Mrs. Tarbell's desk was in the middle of the back room,—she could just see the outer door obliquely through that of her partition,—and Mr. Juddson's was in a similar position in the front room. This was not a very good arrangement. Mrs. Tarbell could not very well be put in the front room with the office-boy, and yet the proximity of the office-boy was not agreeable to Mr. Juddson either. Then, too, most of the books were in the back room, and so was the sofa: altogether it looked as if Mrs. Tarbell were the senior. Mr. Juddson was thinking seriously of having another partition built, and that would at any rate save him from being asked "if Mr. Juddson were in," for, as every one knows, there is a vast difference between being asked "if Mr. Juddson be in," and "is this Mr. Juddson?" But Mr. Juddson had the picture of Chief-Justice Marshall and the map of the battle-field of Gettysburg, so he was not so badly off; and Mrs. Tarbell was very comfortable.
She was just musing over her future, and saying to herself, "When I die, I know that they will call a bar-meeting, and that Mr. Pope will make a eulogy on my character," when the door opened, and Mr. Juddson came in. Mrs. Tarbell returned to business-life immediately.
"Did you find Mullany?" she said.
Mr. Juddson, a tall, black-whiskered man of about fifty, rubbed his hands for a moment over the fire, and then answered shortly that he had found Mullany.
"What did he say?"
"Oh,—what I expected," said Mr. Juddson, turning over the papers on his table. He disliked unnecessary questions. Mrs. Tarbell had no interest in Mullany, and the most she ought to do was to ask about him in an off-hand way in the street-car on the way home. Mr. Juddson discovered the paper for which he was searching, and turned toward the door.
"Are you going out?" said Mrs. Tarbell.
The door was already half open.
"Reference before Murray. Back at one," was all Mr. Juddson deigned to say.
"Alexander!" cried Mrs. Tarbell,—when the office-boy was in, she called her brother Mr. Juddson,—"Alexander!"
"Well?" said Mr. Juddson. He was late as it was.
"You will make the office very cold if you leave the door—but never mind. Don't let me keep you. I only wanted to tell you that I should like to talk to you about something some time to-d—" The rest of the sentence was lost upon Mr. Juddson, who had already shut the door behind him, and Mrs. Tarbell felt aggrieved.
So much aggrieved, in fact, that she found it impossible to return to the law-journal.
"I suppose I need a sedative," she said to herself. "If I were a man, I would put my feet up on the table and light a cigar, or—no! I would never practise that vilest form of the vice." (What she meant by this last phrase I cannot imagine, unless she referred to something which Mr. Juddson had been driven to do because he could not very well smoke while his sister was in the office.) "What," continued Mrs. Tarbell, "what can there be to recommend the position?" She looked at the desk.
"Is it an easy position?" she said. She looked down at her feet.
"Is it even a graceful position?" She swung herself to and fro on her revolving-chair.
She looked about her. The office was empty; the office-boy had gone on a very long errand. "I will try it," she said, with determination.
She removed all the books and papers on the right side of the table to the left side. Then she tilted back her chair, elevated her left foot cautiously, put it down, and elevated her right, placed it determinedly on the table, crossed the other foot over it, leaned forward with some difficulty to arrange her skirts, leaned back again.
"My book seems to lie very easily in my lap," she said to herself. "And the leaves turn over quite willingly."
One page, two pages, three pages. "After all," said she,—"after all—if one were quite alone—and had been sitting for a long time in another attitude—"
Tap-tap! came a timid knock at the door.
"Come in!" cried Mrs. Tarbell, resuming her former position in a great hurry, and dropping the law-journal.
Tap-tap!
"Come in!" said Mrs. Tarbell, picking up the law-journal. "Come in!" she said.
And the door opened slowly.
"Well?" said Mrs. Tarbell.
"Is Mrs. Tarbell in?" said the party of the knocks.
"I am Mrs. Tarbell. Come in, please. What can I do for you?"
"I wanted to see you, ma'am."
"Take a chair. Well?"
"I suppose it's April weather," said the new-comer; "but the rain is right chilly, so it is; like it was a November rain, somehow. Will I put my umbreller right down here? The spring is dreadful late, and the farmers is all complainin', they tell me."
Mrs. Tarbell shuddered.
The new-comer was tall and gaunt and thin; her shoulders sloped, she stooped, her chin was up in the air, and she peered through spectacles. Her hat was rusty, her india-rubber gossamer was rusty, the crape on her dress was so very rusty that it seemed to be made of iron-filings. Her cheeks were the color of unburned coffee-grains or of underdone gingerbread; her nose was long; her eyes, were small and bleary; her protruding lips wrinkled up as she spoke, and displayed her poor yellow old tusks; her scant hair was dirty gray, her forehead was bald, her neck was scraggy: she was particularly and pathetically ugly. Her dress bagged about over her long waist and spidery arms. No wonder Mrs. Tarbell shuddered.
"If I ain't disturbing you, Mrs. Tarbell," the visitor continued, "and if you could just spare the time to listen to me for a minnit, I wanted just to ask you for a little advice. My name is Stiles, ma'am,—Mrs. Annette Gorsley Stiles. Gorsley was my given name before I was married—But I feel as if I was taking up your time, Mrs.
