"Yes," she replied, and he noticed her low pleasant voice and admired the rippling mass of her glossy brown hair as it lifted from her white neck. Here was a stenographer, he reflected, with the well-groomed look of a thoroughbred. The old gentleman certainly was a wonder!
Bob wanted to keep her talking, but could think of nothing in particular to say. Queer how this girl put him ill at ease. And why should he wish to keep her talking, anyway? His dealings with stenographers had always been on a basis of calmest and most business-like indifference, but somehow this one affected him strangely; she "rattled" him.
"Do you take rapid dictation, Miss Thompson?" he finally ventured.
Betty hesitated a moment and her heart sank as she thought of her limitations at the machine. When she had told Hiram Baxter that she could work a typewriter she was speaking from the standpoint of an amateur who had taken the thing up largely as a diversion.
"You mean in shorthand? No, I don't; I'm not a stenographer."
Young Baxter looked at her in surprise. "Not a stenographer?"
"I take dictation direct to the machine," she explained. "Mr. Baxter thinks there are qualities in a private secretary that may be more important than the ability to take rapid dictation."
Bob nodded wisely. "I see. I guess Father told you about the—er—trouble he had with his last secretary?"
"You mean the leak in the New York office?" said Betty quickly.
Bob lowered his voice. "That's what I mean. You'll have to be very careful in this position, Miss Thompson. We're in a fight with the big copper trust and Father has enemies, people who are watching every move he makes and are doing their best to ruin him. That's why Dad went to town this morning. That's why I jumped on a quick steamer the day after he sailed from New York. I heard of things that——" he looked about him cautiously, "that I wouldn't trust in the mails."