第161章

"And now the good times have come," she said, bestowing on him two or three special little pats which were caresses of her own invention, "and people see what you are and always have been, as they ought to have seen long ago, I don't want to feel as if I couldn't keep up with you and understand your plans.Perhaps I've got a little bit of your cleverness, and you might teach me to use it in small ways.I've got a good memory you know, Father love, and I might recollect things people say and make bits of notes of them to save you trouble.And I can calculate.I once got a copy of Bunyan's `Pilgrim's Progress' for a prize at the village school just for sums."The bald but unacknowledged fact that Mr.Hutchinson had never exhibited gifts likely to entitle him to receive a prize for "sums"caused this suggestion to be one of some practical value.When business men talked to him of per cents., and tenth shares or net receipts, and expected him to comprehend their proportions upon the spot without recourse to pencil and paper, he felt himself grow hot and nervous and red, and was secretly terrified lest the party of the second part should detect that he was tossed upon seas of horrible uncertainty.T.Tembarom in the same situation would probably have said, "This is the place where T.T.sits down a while to take breath and count things up on his fingers.I am not a sharp on arithmetic, and I need time--lots of it."Mr.Hutchinson's way was to bluster irritatedly.

"Aye, aye, I see that, of course, plain enough.I see that." And feel himself breaking into a cold perspiration."Eh, this English climate is a damp un," he would add when it became necessary to mop his red forehead somewhat with his big clean handkerchief.

Therefore he found it easy to receive Little Ann's proposition with favor.

"There's summat i' that," he acknowledged graciously, dropping into Lancashire."That's one of the little things a woman can do if she's sharp at figures.Your mother taught me that much.She always said women ought to look after the bits of things as was too small for a man to bother with.""Men have the big things to look after.That's enough for anybody,"said Little Ann."And they ought to leave something for women to do.

If you'll just let me keep notes for you and remember things and answer your letters, and just make calculations you're too busy to attend to, I should feel right-down happy, Father.""Eh!" he said relievedly, "tha art like thy mother.""That would make me happy if there was nothing else to do it," said Ann, smoothing his shoulder.

"You're her girl," he said, warmed and supported.

"Yes, I'm her girl, and I'm yours.Now, isn't there some little thing I could begin with? Would you mind telling me if I was right in what Ithought you thought about Mr.Rosenthal's offer?""What did you think I thought about it?" He was able to put affectionate condescension into the question.

She went to her work-basket and took out a sheet of paper.She came back and sat cozily on the arm of his chair.

"I had to put it all down when I came home," she said."I wanted to make sure I hadn't forgotten.I do hope I didn't make mistakes."She gave it to him to look at, and as he settled himself down to its careful examination, she kept her blue eyes upon him.She herself did not know that it was a wonderful little document in its neatly jotted down notes of the exact detail most important to his interests.

There were figures, there were calculations of profits, there were records of the gist of his replies, there were things Hutchinson himself could not possibly have fished out of the jumbled rag-bag of his uncertain recollections.

"Did I say that?" he exclaimed once.

"Yes, Father love, and I could see it upset him.I was watching his face because it wasn't a face I took to."Joseph Hutchinson began to chuckle--the chuckle of a relieved and gratified stout man.

"Tha kept thy eyes open, Little Ann," he said."And the way tha's put it down is a credit to thee.And I'll lay a sovereign that tha made no mistakes in what tha thought I was thinking."He was a little anxious to hear what it had been.The memorandum had brought him up with a slight shock, because it showed him that he had not remembered certain points, and had passed over others which were of dangerous importance.Ann slipped her warm arm about his neck, as she nearly always did when she sat on the arm of his chair and talked things over with him.She had never thought, in fact she was not even aware, that her soft little instincts made her treat him as the big, good, conceited, blundering child nature had created him.