Tarbell on the door-step: he was standing there, indeed, when she came
in. He was always standing on the door-step: he carried on most of his
business, especially with the politicians, in public. "I beg that you
will use my library on all occasions," he continued, raising his voice
a little. "If I may say so myself, it is rather comprehensive; in fact,
I am very proud of it. And any assistance which I can give you in any
way, my dear madam, will, I need hardly say, be given most heartily."

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,