“I have brought you a companion, Olympia, one whose business and pleasure it will be to remain with you while I am making speeches a hundred miles away.  Do you not see reason for thanking me?” This last question he pointed with a glance in my direction, which drew her attention and caused her to give me a kindly look.

I met her eyes fairly.  They were large and gray and meant for smiling; eyes that, with a happy heart behind them, would illumine her own beauty and create joy in those upon whom they fell.  But to-day, nothing but question lived in their dark and uneasy depths, and it was for me to face that question and give no sign of what the moment was to me.

“I think—­I am sure, that my thanks are due you,” she courteously replied, with a quick turn toward her husband, expressive of confidence, and, as I thought, of love.  “I dreaded being left alone.”

He drew a deep breath of relief; we both did; then we talked a little, after which Mayor Packard found some excuse for taking me from the room.

“Now for the few words you requested,” said he; and, preceding me down the hall, he led me into what he called his study.

I noted one thing, and only one thing, on entering this place.  That was the presence of a young man who sat at a distant table reading and making notes.  But as Mayor Packard took no notice of him, knowing and expecting him to be there, no doubt, I, with a pardonable confusion, withdrew my eyes from the handsomest face I had ever seen, and, noting that my employer had stopped before a type-writer’s table, I took my place at his side, without knowing very well what this move meant or what he expected me to do there.

I was not long left in doubt.  With a gesture toward the type-writer, he asked me if I was accustomed to its use; and when I acknowledged some sort of acquaintance with it, he drew an unanswered letter from a pile on the table and requested me to copy it as a sample.

I immediately sat down before the type-writer.  I was in something of a maze, but felt that I must follow his lead.  As I proceeded to insert the paper and lay out the copy to hand, he crossed over to the young man at the other end of the room and began a short conversation which ended in some trivial demand that sent the young man from the room.  As the door closed behind him Mayor Packard returned to my side.

“Keep on with your work and never mind mistakes,” said he.  “What I want is to hear the questions you told me to expect from you if you stayed.”

Seemingly Mayor Packard did not wish this young man to know my position in the house.  Was it possible he did not wholly trust him?  My hands trembled from the machine and I was about to turn and give my full thought to what I had to say.  But pride checked the impulse.  “No,” I muttered in quick dissuasion, to myself.  “He must see that I can do two things at once and do both well.”  And so I went on with the letter.