poor girl the chance to earn. If it hadn't been for helping me
you would have had a secretary at your elbow, after you got to the point
of needing him."

"I took that course, as you well know, because I wanted you at my elbow.
If you had been able to write only a word a minute, I should have wanted
you there just the same."

She gave him a merry, understanding look, then read him the words he had
just spoken from her book.

"Where in the world did you learn, and how?" he demanded. "And how have
you become so proficient in so short a time?"

"I'm afraid it's rather blundering work yet, but it will grow better all
the time. Why, I've been taking lessons all winter, dear sir, at the
best shorthand school in the city. I made up my mind that it was the
thing I could do that would be of most use to you. It's a shame that a
man who is doing the original work that you are shouldn't have time to
give other people more benefit of it. It seemed to me you could write an
important monograph in an hour, if you just had me at hand to take down
the words of wisdom as they fell from your learned lips. Why you haven't
used a secretary before for this purpose I don't know, but I certainly
am glad you haven't. It insures me the position."

If she had wanted a reward for long and severe labours she had it in his
look. "Other men dictate such papers," he said, "but somehow it has
never seemed to me I could. I tried it once or twice and didn't get on
at all as I did when I had the pen in my fingers. But with you, it may
be different."

"It will be different," she told him confidently. "You're going to
become used to my being so much a part of you that you can think as if
you were using my brains--or I were using yours, which would be more to
the purpose, I admit. Oh, we're going to accomplish all sorts of things
together."

He looked down into her eager face, glowing with colour, the dark eyes
apparently seeing visions which gave them keen delight. "You are a
partner worth having," he said, much moved. "I knew you would be, and
it's seemed to me all winter that no wife could be more of one. But if
you're going to add this to your other activities you will make yourself
even more indispensable than you already are, which is saying much."

She could hardly wait until she had made a trial of this new form of
partnership. The ship had barely turned her face out to sea, parting
company with her pilot, before the work began.

Doctor Cra