Gears whirled and clicked and the workers labored studiously over the individual machines. Sounds echoed all around, drowning out the scratchy phonograph in the corner cranking out some Edward Elgar tune, and so it was no great surprise that I felt rather than heard her presence. "Well, sir?"

 

I took the time to look her up and down, as befitting someone who was about to make a new hire. "I'm most impressed, Miss Havermeyer."

 

She stared at me for such a long time that I wasn't sure she'd heard me over the noise, and then I saw a slow cat-like smile work its way across her face. We both knew that it wasn't only her command over the workers that impressed me.

 

Bustle skirt. Victorian sensibility, for a modern woman.