well who, during the four years since he had left Harvard, had
been learning the textile industry, of Miss Ottway, and Janet. Miss
Ottway was the agent's private stenographer, a strongly built, capable
woman with immense reserves seemingly inexhaustible. She had a deep,
masculine voice, not unmusical, the hint of a masculine moustache, a
masculine manner of taking to any job that came to hand. Nerves were
things unknown to her: she was granite, Janet tempered steel. Janet
was the second stenographer, and performed, besides, any odd tasks that
might be assigned.

There were, in the various offices of the superintendents, the
paymaster and purchasing agent, other young women stenographers whose
companionship Janet, had she been differently organized, might have
found congenial, but something in her refused to dissolve to their
proffered friendship. She had but one friend,--if Eda Rawle, who worked
in a bank, and whom she had met at a lunch counter by accident, may be
called so. As has been admirably said in another language, one kisses,
the other offers a cheek: Janet offered the cheek. All unconsciously she
sought a relationship rarely to be found in banks and business offices;
would yield herself to none other. The young women stenographers in the
Chippering Mill, respectable, industrious girls, were attracted by a
certain indefinable quality, but finding they made no progress in their
advances, presently desisted they were somewhat afraid of her; as one of
them remarked, "You always knew she was there." Miss Lottie Meyers, who
worked in the office of Mr. Orcutt, the superintendent across the hall,
experienced a brief infatuation that turned to hate. She chewed gum
incessantly, Janet found her cheap perfume insupportable; Miss Meyers,
for her part, declared that Janet was "queer" and "stuck up," thought
herself better than the rest of them. Lottie Meyers was the leader of
a group of four or five which gathered in the hallway at the end of the
noon hour to enter animatedly into a discussion of waists, hats, and
lingerie, to ogle and exchange persiflages with the young men of the
paymaster's corps, to giggle, to relate, sotto voce, certain stories
that ended invariably in hysterical laughter. Janet detested these
conversations. And the sex question, subtly suggested if not openly
dealt with, to her was a mystery over which she did not dare to ponder,
terrible, yet too sacred to be degraded. Her feelings, concealed under
a