At last he found inside a book on motor fuels the wad of copy-paper on which he had scrawled notes with a broad, soft pencil, and he began to dictate a short article on air-cooling. Una was terrified lest she be unable to keep up, but she had read recent numbers of the _Gazette_ thoroughly, she had practised the symbols for motor technologies, and she was not troubled by being watched. Indeed, Babson seemed to have enough to do in keeping his restless spirit from performing the dismaying feat of leaping straight out of his body. He leaned back in his revolving desk-chair with a complaining squawk from the spring, he closed his eyes, put his fingers together piously, then seized the chair-arms and held them, while he cocked one eye open and squinted at a large alarm-clock on the desk. He sighed profoundly, bent forward, gazed at his ankle, and reached forward to scratch it. All this time he was dictating, now rapidly, now gurgling and grunting while he paused to find a word. "Don't be so _nervous_!" Una wanted to scream at him, and she wanted to add, "You didn't ask my permission!" when he absently fumbled in a cigarette-box. She didn't like Walter Babson, after all! But he stopped after a rhapsody on the divine merits of an air-cooling system, clawed his billowing black hair, and sighed, "Sounds improbable, don't it? Must be true, though; it's going to appear in the _Gazette_, and that's the motor-dealer's bible. If you don't believe it, read the blurbs we publish about ourselves!" Then he solemnly winked at her and went on dictating. When he had finished he demanded, "Ever take any dictation in this office before?" "No, sir." "Ever take any motor dictation at all?" "No, sir." "Then you'd better read that back to me. Your immejit boss--the office-manager--is all right, but the secretary of the company is always pussy-footing around, and if you're ever having any trouble with your stuff when old plush-ears is in sight, keep on typing fast, no matter what you put down. Now read me the dope." It was approximately correct. He nodded, and, "Good work, little girl," he said. "You'll get along all right. You get my dictation better than that agitated antelope Miss Harman does, right now. That's all." § 2