Lavinski still came and went with his huge bundles of clothes.
Nance no longer sewed on buttons. She was promoted to a place under the
swinging lamp where she was expected to make an old decrepit
sewing-machine forget its ailments and run the same race it had run in
the days of its youth. As she took her seat on the first night, she
looked up curiously. A new sound coming regularly from the inner room
made her pause.
"Is that a type-writer?" she asked incredulously.
Mr. Lavinski, pushing his derby from his shining brow, smiled proudly.
"Dat's vat it is," he said. "My Ike, he's got a scholarship offen de high
school. He's vorking his vay through de medical college now. He'll be a
big doctor some day. He vill cure my Leah."
Nance's ambition took fire at the thought of that type-writer. It
appealed to her far more than the sewing-machine.
"Say, Ike," she said at her first opportunity, "I wish you'd teach me how
to work it."
"What'll you give me?" asked Ike, gravely. He had grown into a tall, thin
youth, with the spectacled eyes and stooped shoulders of a student.
"Want me to wash the dishes for your mother?" Nance suggested eagerly. "I
could do it nights before I begin sewing."
"Very well," Ike agreed loftily. "We'll begin next Sunday morning at nine
o'clock. Mind you are on time!"
Knowledge to Ike was sacred, and the imparting of it almost a religious
rite. He frowned down all flippancy on the part of his new pupil, and
demanded of her the same diligence and perseverance he exacted of
himself.
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