Free The Typewriter Girl by Alison Atlee

Seiler—she was asking John about him.
    John shook his head. “That is why I took you to Sarah’s. Tobias is meeting us”—he indicated Lillian—“right now for tea, and he’ll be too busy this evening; he makes a point to socialize with the guests on Saturday evenings.”
    “I see.”
    It was clearly the end of the conversation. But neither of them moved. Then they both murmured, “I’m sorry.”
    John added, “I thought Sarah understood. She oughtn’t have brought you.”
    “No, it wasn’t her fault.”
    Lillian said, “Mr. Jones.” She made it lilt.
    John put out his arm for her, but she had to move a few steps to take it, and she could sense his uneasiness over the hotel girl, even though her predicament was of her own making.
    “Come with us,” he said.
    Both Lillian and the hotel girl laughed.
    Lillian saw her own panic reflected in the other girl’s eyes.

The exercise of taste and good judgment are as necessary to success in type-writing as in any other occupation.
    —How to Become Expert in Type-writing
    T obias will be happy to meet you,” John went on. “You’ll be able to get acquainted before—”
    “Mr. Jones,” Lillian said, no lilt.
    Of all the mad notions, inviting an employee to dine with a superior. From age twelve, Lillian had navigated more garden parties, soirees, socials, holiday meals, and balls, both masquerade and otherwise, than she could count, but the thought of the awkwardness this situation would bring—and just as she was meeting for the first time John’s dearest friends in Idensea—was more than she could stomach. And did he have no feelings for the hotel girl herself, how humiliated she’d be in the tearoom dressed as she was? John Jones, oblivious to the most basic social mores.
    “You already invited Mr. Dunning earlier today,” she reminded him. “Let me go ahead of the two of you, and give the tearoom staff a bit of notice of these last-moment changes, hmm?”
    She released John’s arm as if already en route. But if she were forced to enter that tearoom without an escort, and all to ensure a switchboard operator or whatever she was had a chair—
    But no, she was safe. The hotel girl was begging off, walking off, cutting off any chance for John to argue or persuade. She and the hotel girl had rescued each other, good feminine sense prevailing in the onslaught of male idiocy.
    John, however, was too quiet on the way to tea.
    But she knew what to do. Here at the table were his friends: The Seilers each came from old hotelier families in Switzerland; Mr. Seiler was the Swan Park’s chief manager, while his wife headed housekeeping. Then, Mrs. Elliot, a widow for several years, sitting with her son, a lad of twelve or so. John had lived with the Elliots his first months in Idensea, before Dr. Elliot’s death.
    Lillian would dazzle them.
    And best of all, there was that last-moment addition to the party, Mr. Dunning, Sir Alton’s only son.
    “How best to punish our tardy host, Miss Gilbey?” he asked as she and John were seated.
    She smiled at him. They’d become acquainted in London, when he’d been tagging along once with John. Wasn’t that a funny way to think of it, a baronet’s son tagging along with John Jones? Yet the reverse hadn’t been the case.
    “Hide the sweets, of course,” she replied.
    “How awfully cunning of you. But you wouldn’t be very comfortable huddling beneath the table, I fear.”
    The jest was not the wittiest she’d heard, but she laughed all the same, because she found something appealing in its delivery, and because it suited her to let John hear her laugh with another man, let him hear her speak with another man about the upcoming Albert Hall season. Invite another man to her music society party in June.
    Mr. Dunning was young, fresh from Cambridge, but he made her think of her parents’ eighteenth birthday gift to her, gleaming pearls nestled in black velvet. Immediately, effortlessly attractive, inspiring a