Anybody Can Do Anything by Betty MacDonald Page A

huge green barley sugar Scottie dog.
    I took the dog and because I was nervous and felt guilty, I was too effusive in my thanks and kept saying over and over and over, “Oh, Mr. Webster, you shouldn’t have done it!” as though he were trying to force a diamond anklet on me. Then, God knows why, but in an effort to offer further proof of my gratitude, I bit into the candy dog and one whole enormous green leg came off in my mouth just as Mr. Webster, who by this time was sick to death of me and obviously trying to think of some kind way to get rid of me, looked up to ask if there had been any mail or calls. I couldn’t answer, I just stood there in my hat and coat, trying desperately to maneuver the huge leg around in my mouth, my eyes full of tears and green drool running down my chin. It was not a sight to inspire confidence in my efficiency. In fact, if I had been Mr. Webster I wouldn’t have kept me if I’d been able to produce degrees in shorthand, typing, mining, geology and map drawing, but Mr. Webster was very kind and had been a good friend of Daddy’s so he went over and looked out the windows at the mountains while I pulled myself together.
    As I look back on it now, it would have been cheaper and less of a strain for Mr. Webster to have dispensed with me and hired a cleaning woman, because, eager though I was to help, all I could do well was to dust the furniture and his ore samples and clean out cupboards. I typed a few letters but I was so nervous that I made terrible mistakes, used reamsof paper and the finished product usually had little holes in it where my eraser had bitten too deeply.
    Mr. Webster, upset by the holes in his letters but not wanting to hurt my feelings, said I was much too thin and ordered a quart of milk to be delivered to the office every morning and at ten and three came out and stood over me while I drank a glass. This embarrassed me so I gulped the milk down in huge glurping swallows, which brought on terrible gas pains and several times made me belch loudly into the telephone when I was following Mary’s instructions and trying to use Standard English.
    The first day Mr. Webster was back he took Mary and me to lunch at a small French restaurant in an alley. While we ate goslings en casserole and drank Chablis, Mary told him that he had nothing to worry about because she had figured out everything. Whenever he wanted to dictate he was to tell me and I would call her on the phone and while she took his dictation I would go over and answer her phone. To my intense relief Mr. Webster laughed and said that he thought it was a wonderful scheme, and it did work out very well until Mary’s very demanding boss arrived in town and it became harder and harder for her to get away.
    Then Mr. Webster suggested that I take his easier dictation and I did and one morning when I had written “dead sir” and “kinkly yours” on a letter, he offered to send me to nightschool to learn shorthand and typing. I told him that I would like to go but I didn’t think that Mary would approve and he said, “Betty, my dear girl, you and Mary are entirely different personalities and anyway she is a whizz in both shorthand and typing.”
    So,I went to nightschool, which Mr. Webster paid for at the rate of fifteen dollars a month, and studied shorthand and typing. My shorthand teacher, a small sandy man with a nasal voice and thin yellow lips, seemed to be an excellent shorthand teacher because at the end of three months everyone in the class but me could take down and transcribe business letters and little stories.
    I couldn’t learn shorthand. I got p’s and b’s mixed up, I couldn’t tell m from n and even when I could write it I couldn’t read it back. I didn’t have too much trouble with Mr. Webster’s letters because he dictated very slowly and I knew what he was talking about but I was such a miserable failure at nightschool that the only thing that kept me from shooting myself was the amazing