xtile 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 an exterior of self-possession,
deceptive to the casual observer, sometimes became mo