“A stenographer maybe,” Wise went on, and Olive cried:
“Do you mean Jenny?”
“Oh, no; this is written by a woman with more brains than Jenny ever dreamed of. A very clever woman in fact.”
“Who?” breathed Olive, her eager face flushing in her interest and anxious to know more.
“I don’t know that, Miss Raynor, but——”
“Oh, Mr. Wise,” broke in Mrs. Vail; “you are so wonderful! Won’t you explain how you do it, as you go along?”
She spoke as if he were a conjurer.
“Anything to oblige,” Wise assented. “Well, here’s how it looks to me. The writer of this letter is a business woman, not only because she uses this large, single sheet of bond paper, but because she knows how to use it. She is a stenographer,—by that I do not necessarily mean that is her business,—she may have a knowledge of stenography, and be in some much more important line of work. But she is an accomplished typist and a rapid one. This, I know, of course, from the neat and uniform typing. She is clever, because she has used this non-committal paper, which is in no way especial or individual. She is a business woman, again, because she uses such expressions as ‘quit,’ railroaded,’ ‘Tecs,’ ‘straight goods,’——”
“Which she might do by way of being misleading——” murmured Zizi.
“Too many of ’em, and too casually used, Ziz. A society girl trying to pose as a business woman never would have rolled those words in so easily. I should have said a newspaper woman but for a certain peculiarity of style which indicates,—what, Zizi?”