He continued to sit, but she was conscious that his eyes were sweeping her from head to foot with frank appraisal.
"A pretty woman has a good chance to get by with almost anything she sets her mind on," he said, finally.
She drew in a barely perceptible breath. The blunt tip of his shoe was jammed squarely against her toe. She withdrew her foot, but she sat down again.
"I really ought to be angry with you, Mr. Hilmer," she purred at him, archly. "It's very nice of you to attempt to be so gallant, but, after all, talk is pretty cheap, isn't it?… So far I don't seem to be making good as a solicitor. So what else is there left?"
"How about being your husband's stenographer?" he asked, without a trace of banter.
She forgot to be amazed. "I don't know anything about shorthand," she replied, simply.
"Well, you could soon learn to run a typewriter," he insisted. "I have a young woman in my office who takes my letters direct on the machine as I dictate them. She's as good as, if not better than, my chief stenographer. That would save your husband at least seventy-five dollars a month."
She had an impulse to rise and sweep haughtily out of the room. What right had this man to tell her what she could or could not do? The impudence of him! But she didn't want to appear absurd. She leaned back and looked at him through her half-closed eyelids as she said, with a slight drawl:
"Would my presence in the office be a bid for your support, Mr.
Hilmer?"
"It might," he said, looking at her keenly.