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. Tarbell."
"Not at all," said Mrs. Tarbell hastily.
"Well, ma'am, my husband he's dead, been dead this six years now, and left me with four to feed, and—well, I don't know just how to begin, rightly. You see, it's this way. Celandine, my eldest,—that was his name for her; he had a right pretty knack at names, and was always for names that ran easy,—Celandine she's eighteen now, 'n' she wants to be doing something for herself. It drives me real hard to pay for all four of them out of a sewing-machine and the little I make selling candies over a counter,—five cents' worth of chocolate drops and penny's-worths of yellow taffy; never more than fifty cents a day, living where we do, in Pulaski Street,—and Celandine she's bound to help me some way. The next oldest to Celandine is on'y ten; and if I was to starve I wouldn't have him to sell papers or black boots, and his father a foreman; and the' ain't no call for office-boys nowadays, 'r else it's because Augustus is so small for his age—"
"We have an office-boy," murmured Mrs. Tarbell.
"I know, ma'am," said Mrs. Stiles. "Leastways, I guessed as much. I was thinking of asking you about Celandine." Mrs. Tarbell stirred uneasily, and Mrs. Stiles hurried on: "Celandine and me we were talking things over the other day,—we've been reading about you in the newspapers, Mrs. Tarbell, nigh on to four years now; Celandine has always been a comprehending child, precocious, as they say, and quick-witted, and she's been watching your career, ma'am, just as clost as you could yourself. And the day you was admitted she come home,—a friend of hers gave her the afternoon paper,—and she says, 'Mother,' she says, 'Mrs. Tarbell is admitted!'—just like it was a personal friend of yours, Mrs. Tarbell; and reely, ma'am, I suppose I oughtn't to say it, but there's been a good many women all over this country felt themselves personal friends of yours, ma'am, knowing how much there was meant by your success and feeling how near the question come to themselves; and if good wishes brings good luck, that's what you have to thank for succeeding. But Celandine she's an ambitious girl, Mrs, Tarbell, and the long and the short of it is just this, that she's set her heart on being a lawyer, and she's either too shy or too proud, mebbe, to come here with me to speak to you, ma'am: so I just put on my bunnit the first day I could, rain or shine, and rain it's turned out to be, to say a word to you about her and just ask you what you thought."
"A lawyer?" gasped