City and town life -- Fiction; Man-woman relationships -- Fiction
“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 amateur 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.”
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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