Nance no longer sewed on buttons. She was promoted to a place under the swinging lamp where she was expected to make an old decrepit sewing-machine forget its ailments and run the same race it had run in the days of its youth. As she took her seat on the first night, she looked up curiously. A new sound coming regularly from the inner room made her pause.
"Is that a type-writer?" she asked incredulously.
Mr. Lavinski, pushing his derby from his shining brow, smiled proudly.
"Dat's vat it is," he said. "My Ike, he's got a scholarship offen de high school. He's vorking his vay through de medical college now. He'll be a big doctor some day. He vill cure my Leah."
Nance's ambition took fire at the thought of that type-writer. It appealed to her far more than the sewing-machine.
"Say, Ike," she said at her first opportunity, "I wish you'd teach me how to work it."
"What'll you give me?" asked Ike, gravely. He had grown into a tall, thin youth, with the spectacled eyes and stooped shoulders of a student.
"Want me to wash the dishes for your mother?" Nance suggested eagerly. "I could do it nights before I begin sewing."
"Very well," Ike agreed loftily. "We'll begin next Sunday morning at nine o'clock. Mind you are on time!"
Knowledge to Ike was sacred, and the imparting of it almost a religious rite. He frowned down all flippancy on the part of his new pupil, and demanded of her the same diligence and perseverance he exacted of himself. He not only taught her to manipulate the type-writer, but put her through an elementary course of stenography as well.