thing occurs it is usually because the woman in question is the ablest
and very likely also the best person in the outfit, and she assumes the
control of affairs by a process of natural selection. Miss Wiggin was
the conscience, if Mr. Tutt was the heart, of Tutt & Tutt. Nobody,
unless it was Mr. Tutt, knew where she had come from or why she was
working if at all in only a semi-respectable law office. Without her
something dreadful would have happened to the general morale. Everybody
recognized that fact.

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.