"Have you the typewriting machine here?" she asked, ignoring my compliment. "I wish to see what it is like."
I put the machine on a table, arranging it for her inspection. It was an original Hammond, which I prefer to the universal keyboard. She drew up a chair and listened intently while I explained its workings, showing how the capitals and figures are produced with the same set of keys as the lower case letters. I showed the working of the ribbon, the arrangement of the alarm bell and all the other points needed by one who had never operated that style. When I had finished and inserted a sheet of paper she began carefully to write a sentence, encouraged occasionally by my guidance when the unfamiliar location of the keys caused her to pause.
"I shall be able to use it as rapidly as the Remington, in a week," she said, when she finished the sheet. "It is not nearly as hard as I imagined."
She left the table and resumed her seat in the chair, where we fell into a conversation that lasted several hours. She counted with me the days that remained and was glad they were so few. She said she could think of nothing more that she needed before starting: yes, the jewelry was quite sufficient. She put back each piece in the case it had come in, asking me to keep them till we were ready to go.
"You are sure you will not be sorry for what you are doing?" she asked, after a time.
"How can I, if you enjoy the journey?" was my reply.
She shrugged her shoulders prettily and said it was time to leave. She declined with many thanks an invitation to dine with me again, making a light excuse, and with a friendly grasp of the hand took her departure. It had been agreed that she would call for a short time each afternoon that remained.
When I had become chilled at the vacancy her absence made in the room I went over to the table and looked at what she had written on the machine. It was a pleasure even to see the lines her fair hands had made, and I withdrew the sheet she had covered as if it were something sacred. Glancing over it I noted to my surprise, that the lines had not been written with accidental meaning—that it contained a message for my eyes and heart. There were naturally slight errors caused by the writer's unfamiliarity with the instrument, but no ambiguity of any kind. And this is what the message said to me:
Once there was a child, who had been reared in comfort, almost in luxury, in the fairest part of the fair State of Maryland. At the age of sixteen a cruel fate deprived her of both parents. The guardian to whom her small means were intrusted proved false and in another year she was left to face poverty alone.