Part 26 (2/2)

”You certainly can do anything now,” Nancy said, one day in late September, when she had given s.h.i.+rley an unusually trying test at top speed, and the worker had typewritten it without an error worth mentioning.

”I 'm not so sure.” s.h.i.+rley studied her paper. ”I 'm used to you, and you don't flurry me much. But if I should go to father and offer myself for a trial, I 'm afraid I should bungle it.”

”But you can't get office practice without office practice. Nothing can take its place or give you confidence, I should think. Why don't you let Murray try you? If he dictates as fast as he talks when he 's discussing business with Peter, he must be hard enough for anybody.”

That evening, as Murray and Jane, in the library, were discussing certain household matters, s.h.i.+rley, sitting at the big table with her notebook, turned a leaf and began to take down the conversation.

”Did I say that?” Murray asked, toward the close of the conference. ”I thought I put it quite differently.”

”You said, dear,” said Jane, ”that it ought to cost that, not that it did.”

”Are you sure?”

”Quite sure.”

”I must have been wandering in my mind. I seem to hear myself saying in a tone of great a.s.surance that it actually did cost seventeen dollars.

I could n't have said anything else, knowing the facts.”

Jane merely smiled, sure of her ground, but not liking to dispute it further. Murray took a turn up and down the room, whistling softly. He himself would not insist upon the thing he was sure he had said, but he was none the less confident. It seemed to bring the discussion to a standstill, as such small differences of statement sometimes will.

s.h.i.+rley began to read aloud from her note-book a reproduction of the conversation which had just taken place. Listening incredulously, Murray heard himself quoted as saying precisely that which Jane had a.s.serted.

”Look here,” said he, coming over to the table and seizing upon the note-book. ”Are you sure you have that straight--that you 're not saying it from memory of what Jane said I said?”

”I did n't get every word you said, but I did get that sentence. You brought out the 'ought' so strenuously I put the exact sign down.”

”I 'll give in, of course, but I 'll have to be careful of what I say in your hearing after this. You must be pretty good at it, if you caught all that off our tongues. We were talking fairly fast, if I remember.”

”You were very nearly too fast for me--in spots. Conversation 's harder to take than anything else. Do you want to try me on a business letter?”

”With pleasure,” and Murray promptly pulled a letter out of his pocket, glanced it over, and began to dictate a reply.

Before she had done two lines, s.h.i.+rley realised that the actual receiving of dictation from a man of business, who was seriously putting her to a test, was quite different from any amount of practice with Nancy Bell. Murray's keen eyes were upon her, he was watching her fingers as they flew, he was using business terms with which she was not familiar. These technicalities she was forced to omit, but after a little she steadied under the consciousness that he was speaking not too rapidly, and that he paused now and then between sentences, as if studying the letter he was answering.

At the end she said, ”I 'll make you a copy,” and flew out of the room.

Murray smiled at Jane, who had been an interested witness of the scene.

”I can't get used to the idea that the child is serious in all this,”

said he. ”I know she's been working at it all summer, but I 've seen so little of it, and she 's been so quiet about it, I forget that she means business. If mother and Olive had been at home all this time I should have heard of little else.”

”There 's no doubt of her being in earnest. She and Nan have practised by the hour,” answered Jane. ”I think you'll find her copy pretty correct.”

”I doubt it. She certainly caught the gist of our conversation, but that 's comparatively easy, for her memory would help out on the sort of thing we were saying. But when it comes to getting it word for word, as a business letter must, she 'll find that 's another thing.”

<script>