“I drove her over to Bimley’s,” the boy said, “and she sat there where you are for two miles without saying a word. Then she turned at me quick and says, ‘Have you got a cigarette?’ and I said yes I had, just one. Then she said, ‘Have yer got a match?’ and I give her that, and she smoked for a long time without sayin’ anything. After a while she let out and said this was the meanest, low-down town she ever struck, that they was meaner’n dirt here, especially the college, and that she never wanted t’ see it n’r hear of it agin. Yer see, she goes from one town to another and gits up dog shows for the people that have fine dogs, and they have the town band, an’ lemonade an’ cake an’ prizes. Anyway, she had a hard time stirrin’ them up here; but she could have got through all right only for the president of the college. He said he wouldn’t let the girls go, and that settled it. They gave it up after this girl’d blown in a two days’ bill at the hotel, and she got mad and lit out. Well, she quieted down agin before we got to Bimley’s, and when we was in the hollow by Moresville I looked at her and she was cryin’.” One other glimpse: Miss Linnett was the typewriter at Stoke Brothers’. At first she had been just the typewriter, coming highly recommended from the typewriter school. She appeared at the minute of nine and went away at the minute of five, unless one of the Stokes stayed beyond that hour, or late letters and the copying book delayed her. She unvaryingly dressed in black, wore her brown hair simply in a knot, and in the depth of winter always had a flower of some sort on her table. The elder Stoke was feeble, and his eyesight grew to be so poor that she read his letters to him. The junior Stoke would never let her take formal dictation, preferring to give her the gist of what he wanted to say and letting her put it in her own way. In this habit they both came greatly to depend upon her. After a time, too, her growing knowledge of the business induced the cashier and bookkeeper to go to her in certain contingencies, and she acquired, without either seeking or rejecting it, various discretionary powers in regard to the machinery of the business. If anything went wrong they resorted to Miss Linnett. If old Stoke forgot anything Miss Linnett was a second memory to him. If the younger Stoke was in a hurry he would hand over the letters to Miss Linnett to answer as she saw fit. She knew all the correspondents of the house and their prejudices. She knew the combination of old Stoke’s private safe after Stoke himself had forgotten it. She had a way of her own in putting away documents, and nobody ever thought of studying the scheme. She met all of these obligations with a dispassionate serenity, and everything she did was done with an easy and amiable quickness. She became the brain centre of the office. She was Stoke Brothers.