"Say, Miss Vanderpoel," he said, "I hope it won't make you mad if I own up.Ladies like you don't know anything about chaps like me.On the square and straight out, when I seen you and heard your name I couldn't help remembering whose daughter you was.Reuben S.Vanderpoel spells a big thing.Why, when I was in New York we fellows used to get together and talk about what it'd mean to the chap who could get next to Reuben S.Vanderpoel.We used to count up all the business he does, and all the clerks he's got under him pounding away on typewriters, and how they'd be bound to get worn out and need new ones.And we'd make calculations how many a man could unload, if he could get next.It was a kind of typewriting junior assistant fairy story, and we knew it couldn't happen really.But we used to chin about it just for the fun of the thing.One of the boys made up a thing about one of us saving Reuben S.'s life--dragging him from under a runaway auto and, when he says, `What can Ido to show my gratitude, young man?' him handing out his catalogue and saying, `I should like to call your attention to the Delkoff, sir,' and getting him to promise he'd never use any other, as long as he lived!"Reuben S.Vanderpoel's daughter laughed as spontaneously as any girl might have done.G.Selden laughed with her.
At any rate, she hadn't got mad, so far.
"That was what did it," he went on."When I rode away on my bike I got thinking about it and could not get it out of my head.The next day I just stopped on the road and got off my wheel, and I says to myself: `Look here, business is business, if you ARE travelling in Europe and lunching at Buckingham Palace with the main squeeze.Get busy! What'll the boys say if they hear you've missed a chance like this? YOUhit the pike for Stornham Castle, or whatever it's called, and take your nerve with you! She can't do more than have you fired out, and you've been fired before and got your breath after it.So I turned round and made time.And that was how Ihappened on your avenue.And perhaps it was because I was feeling a bit rattled I lost my hold when the chain broke, and pitched over on my head.There, I've got it off my chest.Iwas thinking I should have to explain somehow."Something akin to her feeling of affection for the nice, long-legged Westerner she had seen rambling in Bond Street touched Betty again.The Delkoff was the centre of G.Selden's world as the flowers were of Kedgers', as the "little 'ome" was of Mrs.Welden's.
"Were you going to try to sell ME a typewriter?" she asked.
"Well," G.Selden admitted, "I didn't know but what there might be use for one, writing business letters on a big place like this.Straight, I won't say I wasn't going to try pretty hard.It may look like gall, but you see a fellow has to rush things or he'll never get there.A chap like me HASto get there, somehow."
She was silent a few moments and looked as if she was thinking something over.Her silence and this look on her face actually caused to dawn in the breast of Selden a gleam of daring hope.He looked round at her with a faint rising of colour.
"Say, Miss Vanderpoel--say----" he began, and then broke off.
"Yes?" said Betty, still thinking.
"C-COULD you use one--anywhere?" he said."I don't want to rush things too much, but--COULD you?""Is it easy to learn to use it?"
"Easy!" his head lifted from his pillow."It's as easy as falling off a log.A baby in a perambulator could learn to tick off orders for its bottle.And--on the square--there isn't its equal on the market, Miss Vanderpoel--there isn't." He fumbled beneath his pillow and actually brought forth his catalogue.
"I asked the nurse to put it there.I wanted to study it now and then and think up arguments.See--adjustable to hold with perfect ease an envelope, an index card, or a strip of paper no wider than a postage stamp.Unsurpassed paper feed, practical ribbon mechanism--perfect and permanent alignment."As Mount Dunstan had taken the book, Betty Vanderpoel took it.Never had G.Selden beheld such smiling in eyes about to bend upon his catalogue.
"You will raise your temperature," she said, "if you excite yourself.You mustn't do that.I believe there are two or three people on the estate who might be taught to use a typewriter.I will buy three.Yes--we will say three."She would buy three.He soared to heights.He did not know how to thank her, though he did his best.Dizzying visions of what he would have to tell "the boys" when he returned to New York flashed across his mind.The daughter of Reuben S.Vanderpoel had bought three Delkoffs, and he was the junior assistant who had sold them to her.
