In the lighter social semblance of their town the Bentleys were paramount. Their doings came to the town ear somehow, and the people followed their lead, if it were a possible thing for them. For example, one of the clerical workers By the Bridge had invented an intrenching tool, a spade, which had been adopted by the army. As a consequence, he was invited to eat at the Bentleys’ Place. On his return from the feast he reported to his eager circle that not only had the ground-floor rooms been filled with people, but that Miss Bentley’s bedroom looked like an intelligence office, so full was it of the maids of the ladies below. This detail of magnificence so possessed the minds of the female portion of the inventor’s acquaintance that By the Tracks was drawn on for Abigails. Male escort was frowned down completely. One might return from a Soot City revel with a man, but to go with one--if he were not “steady company”--was proof positive that there was no quarter-dollar wherewith to hire attendance. Emma was often retained as lady-in-waiting, and through this curiously pretentious institution met and obtained Jarlsen, as well as her fees. Quarry boarded in the Butte household. No one knew why. He imposed on them always, and made them uncomfortable with his odd ways and bad tongue. His board was paid intermittently and with recurrent ill will. He was always a stranger and equally an inmate. He had a fashion of rapping at Emma’s window (her room was on the ground floor) and complaining to her of slights imposed on him by members of her acquaintance. She felt him to be the only man life had shown her whose faults were not condoned by a liking for herself. Every Sunday found her in a leather apron giving Quarry his Sunday morning’s dram of sweetened rum in his tea, to keep him quiet through shaving hours. He came from Ryde, Isle of Wight, and drank tea to the memory of his old home, which had long since forgotten him. Then Emma would get to work. Her apron was of red leather hemmed up with brass-topped nails. It had a pocket lined with tin, where her lather brush was put when she took the razor from under the straps on her left sleeve to stroke a labourer’s jowl. Her lips would be pressed together tightly then, her curling hair caught back with a round comb, like a child’s. When she lathered she talked and laughed, but when she shaved she was silent. Jarlsen shaved himself latterly, and no one understood it but Emma. All the men thought she “had a fluke and struck ile, when she was just digging for potatoes.” That she, in the exercise of her odd function, should have secured Jarlsen seemed to them a wonderful thing. But it was not. Emma was a very good woman, and that is just the same as a lady to men of Jarlsen’s make.