A retiring lawyer and office manager hires a quiet new copyist whose initial diligence gives way to a strange passive refusal to perform tasks. The clerk increasingly declines assignments with a repeated expression of preference not to, disrupting office routines and provoking the narrator's bewilderment, sympathy, and moral unease. Attempts to understand or help fail as the clerk withdraws further into immobility, exposing tensions of authority, compassion, and responsibility within a commercial workplace. The story traces the narrator's introspection about humane limits, social isolation, and the inscrutable inner life of an individual at odds with modern systems.