"Say, who are you staring at, anyway?"
I thought he meant me, and I started to protest that I was merely looking at the type, when I heard the feet of Red Top shuffle, and he said, oh, so meekly and respectfully:
"Yes, sir; I ain't staring at her, sir."
I was relieved, anyway, of a part of the pressure, for the office boy was now busy at some files. I found enough courage at last to look at O'Brien. He was studying me as if I were some strange curiosity that both amused and amazed him.
"You're a nice one, aren't you," said he, "to take a job at fifteen per as an experienced and expert stenographer and—"
I said quickly:
"I am an expert stenographer. It's just the type-writing I can't do, and, oh! if you'll only give me a chance, I'll learn it in a few days, honestly I will. I'm cleverer than most girls, really I am. I taught myself shorthand, and I can type-writing, too. I'll practise every night, and if you'll just try me for a few days, I'll work so hard—and you won't be sorry; I'm sure you won't."
I got this all off quickly and warmly.
To this day I do not know what impulse moved Fred O'Brien to decide that he wanted me as his stenographer. His was an important department, and he could have had as good a stenographer as fifteen dollars a week will get, and that's a fair salary for work of that kind. Here was I, palpably a green girl, who could not type a line! No man's voice ever sounded nicer than that gruff young Irishman's when he said that I could stay, that for the first week I could do the letters by hand; but I was to practise every opportunity I got, and I could help him a lot if I would write the letters without making it necessary for him to dictate them.