His Precious Inheritance (Inspirational Historical Romance) by Dorothy Clark Page B

paper key-board and studied the top row on the left side.
Q-W-E-R-T.
Now, which fingers should she use...
    * * *
    The letters were blurring too much for her to practice any longer. Clarice blinked her eyes and glanced at her open locket watch she’d placed in the light cast by the oil lamp. One o’clock. She looked over at the bed and smiled. Her mother had set the writing box aside and succumbed to sleep close to two hours ago. And she was sleeping well. She hadn’t once moaned with pain.
    Could the surcease of pain mean that her mother might walk again? Hope sprang to her heart. She would arrange for a doctor to come and see her mother as soon as she had the money. And that meant she had to stop practicing with the typewriter at work and concentrate on answering those letters. She wasn’t being paid to learn how to use the typewriter. And her mother’s care came first, even before her ambition to be a columnist for a real newspaper.
    She closed the manual and slipped from her chair to take the writing box off the bed. Her mother’s Bible was open beside it, a verse marked with a small star in the margin. She averted her eyes. How could her mother still believe in God after all she had suffered? She picked up the writing box and placed it on the seat of the chair by the bed, where her mother could reach it, and glanced back at the Bible. The marked verse drew her eye.
For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways, saith the Lord.
    Well, that was certainly true. She would never have let her mother be crippled!
    Trust me.
    The thought was so clear it might have been spoken. She spun about and hurried back to the turret area, turned down the wick to dim the lamp and shrugged out of her dressing gown. The night was warm, but shivers prickled her flesh. She slipped beneath the blanket on the window seat and pulled it up around her neck, seeking the comfort of its softness and warmth. All was dark outside the windows. There were no stars to look at—nothing.
    The silence of the night settled around her. Her heart ached with a longing she didn’t understand and refused to acknowledge. She turned onto her other side and stared at the dim spot of light, the lowered wick glowing against the darkness.

Chapter Three
    M uted voices came from the office. Clarice paused, uncertain as to whether she should seek out Mr. Thornberg or go upstairs on her own. The door ahead beckoned. No Admittance. A smile curved her lips. That sign no longer applied to her. She had gone to the school and turned in her resignation. She stepped through the door and hurried to the stairs.
    The editorial room was empty, but the chandelier over Mr. Thornberg’s desk glowed against the overcast morning. So did hers. And the one over the table with the burlap bag of letters on it. Consideration? Or a subtle message for her to start working on the letters? She fought back a spurt of irritation and strode to her desk. The man was her boss. He had every right to tell her what to do and when to do it. But it took away her chance to show him that she had initiative and was responsible and reliable. And he obviously thought her lacking in those virtues. He hadn’t lit Mr. Willard’s chandelier.
    She unpinned her hat and tossed it into the bottom drawer, turned her back on the enticing sight of the wood box covering her typewriter and crossed to the table. The burlap bag was too heavy for her to easily lift. She dragged a pile of letters out of it, then rolled it to the side of the table and eased it to the floor.
    An open letter rested on the table. She read it, catalogued the questions as a request for the definition and pronunciation of words, placed the letter at the top right corner of the table and opened another. A science-experiment question. That letter started a stack for science-related questions at the top center of the table. The next was added to the first pile, and the next started a stack for grammar queries. Questions