"Thank you, sir, I prefer to stand."
Really this young woman was trying; she was reversing the positions; it was she who was keeping him at a distance, not he her; there was something in the way in which she said "sir" which made him wince; however, he was still professional.
"Quite so, Miss Lindsay, quite so--whichever you prefer. Now, Miss Lindsay, here are some papers of a--of an abstract nature; privacy with regard to them is of the first importance; serious consequences might result were their character to become known outside these chambers." The jobbing secretary inclined her head; he thought she did it very gracefully. "Now, what I require are copies of these papers; you understand, copies--perfectly clean copies. How long do you think it will take you to let me have them?"
"There seem to be a good many."
"There are--oh, there are; quite a number; only they are not all of the same character. Now, for instance, how long will it take you to let me have a perfectly clean copy of that?"
He held out what looked like a musty document, consisting of several foolscap pages, covered with close writing on both sides of each page. She turned it nervously over.
"Is it--is it to be typed?"
"Certainly; oh yes, emphatically."
"What--what machine have you?" He mentioned the maker's name; fortunately it was on one of the same maker's machines she had learnt. "I told you that I had not used a machine recently; I fear, therefore, that I may be rather awkward at first, so that I can hardly tell how long it will take me to let you have a perfectly clean copy of this. There--there appears to be a good deal of it."
"There does--oh yes, I admit it, there does--and of course I shouldn't want an absolutely clean copy." She looked at him; there was something in her look which caused him to look away, with some appearance of confusion; he realized that he had made a mistake. "By that I--I should wish you to understand that--that I shouldn't require you to destroy the entire document merely--merely because of one slight error."