“Oh, but I may never be as proficient as Miss Dixon; she takes notes like lightning, while I can only write fifty words a minute.”
“Well, I could talk slower,” said the lawyer, slyly, giving her another sharp look over his glasses.
Dollie Marlowe smiled, but she was considerably puzzled. It was the longest conversation that she had had with her employer.
For she had only been working two weeks, and it was the first position of any kind that she had ever occupied.
She was only seventeen, but quite large for her age, and up to a few months before had always lived in the country.
As she bowed politely to the lawyer and hurried away from his desk, she could not help wondering if he had guessed just how green and simple she was, and whether his words were intended for anything more than kindly encouragement.
When she reached the little office where her typewriter stood, Dollie went on with her work as steadily as ever, but more than once she caught herself thinking of her employer’s words and wondering if he really did want her to sit in his office.
Dollie Marlowe’s life in the city had not been without its experiences, and at times there was a cloud on the fair girl’s brow as though some of those experiences had been woefully bitter.
She rarely said anything about her own life, but the name of her twin sister was frequently on her lips, and this sister was now a nurse in Charity Hospital.
“My sister Marion is as beautiful as a saint,” she had told Miss Dixon. “She has magnificent gray eyes and such a queenly air. Oh, I could talk forever and not tell half of Marion’s virtues!”