any with his young lady stenographer. With a snappy
"Good-morning, Pitcher," Maxwell dashed at his desk as though he were
intending to leap over it, and then plunged into the great heap of
letters and telegrams waiting there for him.

The young lady had been Maxwell's stenographer for a year. She was
beautiful in a way that was decidedly unstenographic. She forewent
the pomp of the alluring pompadour. She wore no chains, bracelets or
lockets. She had not the air of being about to accept an invitation to
luncheon. Her dress was grey and plain, but it fitted her figure with
fidelity and discretion. In her neat black turban hat was the gold-green
wing of a macaw. On this morning she was softly and shyly radiant. Her
eyes were dreamily bright, her cheeks genuine peachblow, her expression
a happy one, tinged with reminiscence.

Pitcher, still mildly curious, noticed a difference in her ways this
morning. Instead of going straight into the adjoining room, where her
desk was, she lingered, slightly irresolute, in the outer office. Once
she moved over by Maxwell's desk, near enough for him to be aware of
her presence.

The machine sitting at that desk was no longer a man; it was a busy New
York broker, moved by buzzing wheels and uncoiling springs.

"Well--what is it? Anything?" asked Maxwell sharply. His opened mail
lay like a bank of stage snow on his crowded desk. His keen grey eye,
impersonal and brusque, flashed upon her half impatiently.

"Nothing," answered the stenographer, moving away with a little smile.

"Mr. Pitcher," she said to the confidential clerk, did Mr. Maxwell say
anything yesterday about engaging another stenographer?"

"He did," answered Pitcher. "He told me to get another one. I notified
the agency yesterday afternoon to send over a few samples this morning.
It's 9.45 o'clock, and not a single picture hat or piece of pineapple
chewing gum has showed up yet."

"I will do the work as usual, then," said the young lady, "until some
one comes to fill the place." And she went to her desk at once and hung
the black turban hat with the gold-green macaw wing in its accustomed
place.

He who has been denied the spectacle of a busy Manhattan broker during a
rush of business is handicapped for the profession of anthropology. The
poet sings of the "crowded hour of glorious life." The broker's hour is
not only crowded, but the minutes and seconds are hanging to all the
straps and packing both front and rear