Page:Train - Tutt and Mr Tutt (Scribner, 1922).djvu/122

 clients were no more worthy of condemnation than those put forward by far higher-priced and much more celebrated attorneys.

Not that Mrs. Tutt was blind to the dangers to which her husband by virtue of his occupation was exposed. Far from it. Indeed she made it her business to pay periodical visits to the office, ostensibly to see whether or not it was properly cleaned and the windows washed, but in reality—or at least so Tutt suspected—to find out whether the personnel was entirely suitable for a firm of their standing and particularly for a junior partner of his susceptibilities.

But she never discovered anything to give her the slightest cause for alarm. The dramatis personæ of the offices of Tutt & Tutt were characteristic of the firm, none of their employees—except Miss Sondheim, the tumultous-haired lady stenographer—and Willie, the office boy, being under forty years of age.

When not engaged in running errands or fussing over his postage-stamp album, Willie spent most of his time teasing old Scraggs, the scrivener, an unsuccessful teetotaler. A faint odor of alcohol emanated from the cage in which he performed his labors and lent an atmosphere of cheerfulness to what might otherwise have seemed to Broadway clients an unsympathetic environment, though there