ar case. At last he said:

"I tell you what you ought to do. You ought to go in for phonography."

"Phonography?" She was at a loss.

"Yes; Pitman's shorthand, you know."

"Oh! shorthand--yes. I've heard of it. But why?"

"Why? It's going to be the great thing of the future. There never was
anything like it!" His voice grew warm and his glance scintillated. And
now Hilda understood her mother's account of his persuasiveness; she
felt the truth of that odd remark that he could talk the hind leg off a
horse.

"But does it lead to anything?" she inquired, with her strong sense of
intrinsic values.

"I should say it did!" he answered. "It leads to everything! There's
nothing it won't lead to! It's the key of the future. You'll see. Look
at Dayson. He's taken it up, and now he's giving lessons in it. He's got
a room over his aunt's. I can tell you he staggered me. He wrote in
shorthand as fast as ever I could read to him, and then he read out what
he'd written, without a single slip. I'm having one of my chaps taught.
I'm paying for the lessons. I thought of learning myself--yes, really!
Oh! It's a thing that'll revolutionize all business and secretarial work
and so on--revolutionize it! And it's spreading. It'll be the Open
Sesame to everything. Anybody that can write a hundred and twenty words
a minute'll be able to walk into any situation he wants--straight _into_
it! There's never been anything like it. Look! Here it is!"

He snatched up a pale-green booklet from the desk and opened it before
her. She saw the cryptic characters for the first time. And she saw them
with his glowing eyes. In their mysterious strokes and curves and dots
she saw romance, and the key of the future; she saw the philosopher's
stone. She saw a new religion that had already begun to work like leaven
in the town. The revelation was deliciously intoxicating. She was
converted, as by lightning. She yielded to the ecstasy of discipleship.
Here--somehow, inexplicably, incomprehensively--here was the answer to
the enigma of her long desire. And it was an answer original, strange,
distinguished, unexpected, unique; yes, and divine! How lovely, how
beatific, to be the master of this enchanted key!

"It must be very interesting!" she said, low, with the venturesome
shyness of a deer that is reassured.

"I don't mind telling you this," Mr. Cannon went on, with the fire of
the prophet. "I've got something coming along pretty soon"--he repeated
m