“Were you going to try to sell ME a typewriter?” she asked.
“Well,” G. Selden admitted, “I didn't know but what there might be use for one, writing business letters on a big place like this. Straight, I won't say I wasn't going to try pretty hard. It may look like gall, but you see a fellow has to rush things or he'll never get there. A chap like me HAS to get there, somehow.”
She was silent a few moments and looked as if she was thinking something over. Her silence and this look on her face actually caused to dawn in the breast of Selden a gleam of daring hope. He looked round at her with a faint rising of colour.
“Say, Miss Vanderpoel—say——” he began, and then broke off.
“Yes?” said Betty, still thinking.
“C-COULD you use one—anywhere?” he said. “I don't want to rush things too much, but—COULD you?”
“Is it easy to learn to use it?”
“Easy!” his head lifted from his pillow. “It's as easy as falling off a log. A baby in a perambulator could learn to tick off orders for its bottle. And—on the square—there isn't its equal on the market, Miss Vanderpoel—there isn't.” He fumbled beneath his pillow and actually brought forth his catalogue.
“I asked the nurse to put it there. I wanted to study it now and then and think up arguments. See—adjustable to hold with perfect ease an envelope, an index card, or a strip of paper no wider than a postage stamp. Unsurpassed paper feed, practical ribbon mechanism—perfect and permanent alignment.”
As Mount Dunstan had taken the book, Betty Vanderpoel took it. Never had G. Selden beheld such smiling in eyes about to bend upon his catalogue.