Jane merely smiled, sure of her ground, but not liking to dispute it further. Murray took a turn up and down the room, whistling softly. He himself would not insist upon the thing he was sure he had said, but he was none the less confident. It seemed to bring the discussion to a standstill, as such small differences of statement sometimes will.
Shirley began to read aloud from her note-book a reproduction of the conversation which had just taken place. Listening incredulously, Murray heard himself quoted as saying precisely that which Jane had asserted.
"Look here," said he, coming over to the table and seizing upon the note-book. "Are you sure you have that straight--that you 're not saying it from memory of what Jane said I said?"
"I did n't get every word you said, but I did get that sentence. You brought out the 'ought' so strenuously I put the exact sign down."
"I 'll give in, of course, but I 'll have to be careful of what I say in your hearing after this. You must be pretty good at it, if you caught all that off our tongues. We were talking fairly fast, if I remember."
"You were very nearly too fast for me--in spots. Conversation 's harder to take than anything else. Do you want to try me on a business letter?"
"With pleasure," and Murray promptly pulled a letter out of his pocket, glanced it over, and began to dictate a reply.
Before she had done two lines, Shirley realised that the actual receiving of dictation from a man of business, who was seriously putting her to a test, was quite different from any amount of practice with Nancy Bell. Murray's keen eyes were upon her, he was watching her fingers as they flew, he was using business terms with which she was not familiar. These technicalities she was forced to omit, but after a little she steadied under the consciousness that he was speaking not too rapidly, and that he paused now and then between sentences, as if studying the letter he was answering.
At the end she said, "I 'll make you a copy," and flew out of the room. Murray smiled at Jane, who had been an interested witness of the scene.
"I can't get used to the idea that the child is serious in all this," said he. "I know she's been working at it all summer, but I 've seen so little of it, and she 's been so quiet about it, I forget that she means business. If mother and Olive had been at home all this time I should have heard of little else."