Accordingly, Peggy was fetched, and undoubtedly there was no sorrow on the face of Peggy, and no sorrow in her defiant words when she was ushered into Wyndham’s study.
“Here she is, Paul, and I greatly fear from her manner that she isn’t in the least repentant,” said Mrs. Wyndham.
“Ah, thin, an’ that I’m not,” was Peggy’s response. Then the door was shut.
Wyndham glanced up from his desk; he was busy writing a letter, and he did not say a word to Peggy at first, but calmly went on writing. There was something rather fascinating to the child in his manner. He was a very handsome, distinguished-looking man. He wrote very fast. She had never seen any one write properly before, and she had been taught writing, after a fashion, herself, but never writing of this sort. The words seemed to fly over the paper, and then what a funny sort of machine he had close by, with queer little letters sticking up all over it! Suddenly, having finished writing his letter, Wyndham put a sheet of paper into the machine, turned on, as Peggy expressed it, “a kind of tap,” and began making a loud noise and printing as hard as he could.
“Arrah thin! don’t go so fast!” said the child.
Wyndham did not take any notice of her, but went on typing his letter until he had come to the end. Then he folded it up, put it into an envelope, which he addressed, stamped, and laid to one side. Then, for the first time, he looked up at Peggy. She was immensely interested.
“I wish you’d do that again,” she said.
“What am I to do again?” he asked.
“That tip-tapping-tap.”
“Oh, this is what they call a typewriter.”