Fred is an attorney for a patent derrick or windlass concern. One day while demonstrating the windlass, the hook catches on the dress of a woman and lifts her several feet from the sidewalk, exposing a few inches of stockings. The woman is a spinster and the thought that she has been placed in an unladylike attitude is terrible to her. The women in the anti-cigarette league, of which she is president sympathize with her in her grief, and then suddenly thinking that she did it on purpose, just to be cute, they severely criticize her. The woman had previously shown them a present of some silk hose and they felt that she permitted herself to be caught, simply to show her silk stockings. She files a claim against Fred's company and becomes a regular pest at his office. Fred has a pretty wife. One morning she burns the biscuits. Fred becomes sore and leaves the house in a huff, banging the biscuits against the wall. At the office he repents, while his wife sits at home crying. He writes two letters, one a formal, curt business note to the spinster lady, advising her that he will settle all claims against him for $5O0, and for her to reply by mail without trying to seek an interview. The other letter is a tender-worded, sentimental missive to his wife, containing love messages, and inviting her out to lunch. The office boy gets his dates mixed and places the letters in the wrong envelopes, with the result that the sorrowful wife gets the formal business note while the spinster lady receives the tender love missive. Both have hysterics when the letters are received. The spinster lady in a rage consults the members of the anti-cigarette league, but they turn her down cold with the statement that no man would write such a letter unless he had received plenty of encouragement from the woman to do so. The spinster lady then calls to her assistance her brother, who is a professional bruiser and starts for Fred's office. Fred's wife considers suicide. She starts to die via the gas route but the smells sickens her. She starts to take poison but the taste is too disgusting. She tries to shoot herself but don't have strength enough to pull the trigger. She phones for mamma and they start for Fred's office. The spinster lady with her letter arrives at the office and proceeds to clean up on Fred. Fred's wife and her mother are the next to arrive. They see the spinster lady beating up Fred and figure that he has been untrue and is getting beaten up by a woman whom he has fooled. They get in and also start to clean up on Fred. He got his but finally manages to get the letters of the two women exchanged and everybody is happy. Fred then fires his cigarette-smoking, novel-reading messenger boy.