I remembered that she had very dark eyes, and no color; that she wore an Alpine hat and a neat gown, that she looked straight before her with an almost sullen expression when she spoke to the waiter.
“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.
Then one night she broke down, fainted, there before old Stoke, who fell on his knees beside her and wept in real anguish while the little white bookkeeper ran for a doctor, and the cashier tremblingly fetched water to sprinkle her face. When she did not come the next day at nine the situation in the office was pitiful. Old Stoke was useless, and the younger Stoke shifted his letters from one hand to the other in utter misery. The bookkeeper and cashier fumbled through their work dazed and unstrung. In the days of doubt that followed the situation grew more gloomy. There was great excitement when one morning she came down town in a cab, white and fluttering, and, leaning on the bookkeeper’s arm, made her way from the elevator to the office. She smiled at the little group, accepted the homage quietly, insisted on showing them where certain papers were, promised them that she should be back very soon, and went away again, old Stoke patting her hand and telling her to be careful. At the end of the month she died.
“What did they ever do without her?” I asked when I had heard the story.
“They didn’t do without her. Stoke Brothers went out of business. I suppose they had been thinking of doing that; they were pretty well on in years—and they couldn’t get on without Miss Linnett.”
Yes, of all the changes that have marked this changeful century, of all the transformations, social, political and economic, that have affected the situation of women since the establishment of the Republic, that change is most significant and potent which has placed her so widely and so potently in business. Miss America is in business: patiently ambitiously, grotesquely, indispensably in business. The social changes have not been great,—indeed, one is often startled to find how slight they have been. Political changes, important and prophetic as they are, have not as yet sensibly affected the life of women in general; while the extraordinary extent of women’s entrance into business in co-operation with and competition with men, has had an unexampled effect upon the American girl’s domestic, social and political situation.
The American girl is not, as yet, very definitely conscious of this effect, although she has been told about it often and vehemently in one way or another. Unless she is writing a paper for her club she hasn’t time to think much about it. She enjoys business as distinguished from plain work. The idea of a business training rather piques the fancy of an era that has laughed away the tradition of a “sphere,” and the sort of young lady who in a past era would have no obligations beyond needlework, is found dabbling in shorthand and bookkeeping, as the princes learn a trade.