"I'll show him," he said, "I'll send him off with a flea in his ear.""If you'll help me, I'll study out the things I've written down on this paper," Ann said, "and then I'll write down for you just the things you make up your mind to say.It will be such a good lesson for me, if you don't mind, Father.It won't be much to write it out the way you'll say it.You know how you always feel that in business the fewer words the better, and that, however much a person deserves it, calling names and showing you're angry is only wasting time.One of the cleverest things you ever thought was that a thief doesn't mind being called one if he's got what he wanted out of you; he'll only laugh to see you in a rage when you can't help yourself.And if he hasn't got what he wanted, it's only waste of strength to work yourself up.It's you being what you are that makes you know that temper isn't business.""Well," said Hutchinson, drawing a long and deep breath, "I was almost hot enough to have forgot that, and I'm glad you've reminded me.We'll go over that paper now, Ann.I'd like to give you your lesson while we've got a bit o' time to ourselves and what I've said is fresh in your mind.The trick is always to get at things while they're fresh in your mind."The little daughter with the red hair was present during Rosenthal's next interview with the owner of the invention.The fellow, he told himself, had been thinking matters over, had perhaps consulted a lawyer; and having had time for reflection, he did not present a mass of mere inflated and blundering vanity as a target for adroit aim.He seemed a trifle sulky, but he did not talk about himself diffusely, and lose his head when he was smoothed the right way.He had a set of curiously concise notes to which he referred, and he stuck to his points with a bulldog obstinacy which was not to be shaken.Something had set him on a new tack.The tricks which could be used only with a totally ignorant and readily flattered and influenced business ******* were no longer in order.This was baffling and irritating.
The worst feature of the situation was that the daughter did not read a book, as had seemed her habit at other times.She sat with a tablet and pencil on her knee, and, still as unobtrusively as ever, jotted down notes.
"Put that down, Ann," her father said to her more than once."There's no objections to having things written down, I suppose?" he put it bluntly to Rosenthal."I've got to have notes made when I'm doing business.Memory's all well enough, but black and white's better.No one can go back of black and white.Notes save time."There was but one attitude possible.No man of business could resent the recording of his considered words, but the tablet and pencil and the quietly bent red head were extraordinary obstacles to the fluidity of eloquence.Rosenthal found his arguments less ready and his methods modifying themselves.The outlook narrowed itself.When he returned to his office and talked the situation over with his partner, he sat and bit his nails in restless irritation.
"Ridiculous as it seems, outrageously ridiculous, I've an idea," he said, "I've more than an idea that we have to count with the girl.""Girl? What girl?"
"Daughter.Well-behaved, quiet bit of a thing, who sits in a corner and listens while she pretends to sew or read.I'm certain of it.
She's taken to ****** notes now, and Hutchinson's turned stubborn.You need not laugh, Lewis.She's in it.We've got to count with that girl, little female mouse as she looks."This view, which was first taken by Rosenthal and passed on to his partner, was in course of time passed on to others and gradually accepted, sometimes reluctantly and with much private protest, sometimes with amusement.The well-behaved daughter went with Hutchinson wheresoever his affairs called him.She was changeless in the unobtrusiveness of her demeanor, which was always that of a dutiful and obedient young person who attended her parent because he might desire her humble little assistance in small matters.
"She's my secretary," Hutchinson began to explain, with a touch of swagger."I've got to have a secretary, and I'd rather trust my private business to my own daughter than to any one else.It's safe with her."It was so safe with her steady demureness that Hutchinson found himself becoming steady himself.The "lessons" he gave to Little Ann, and the notes made as a result, always ostensibly for her own security and instruction, began to form a singularly firm foundation for statement and argument.He began to tell himself that his memory was improving.Facts were no longer jumbled together in his mind.He could better follow a line of logical reasoning.He less often grew red and hot and flustered.
"That's the thing I've said so often--that temper's got naught to do wi' business, and only upsets a man when he wants all his wits about him.It's the truest thing I ever worked out," he not infrequently congratulated himself."If a chap can keep his temper, he'll be like to keep his head and drive his bargain.I see it plainer every day o'
my life."
