What do you do with yourself ?" He now spoke like a brother, confident of a trustful response.
"I just waste my time," she answered coldly.

She saw that he was puzzled, interested, and piqued, and that he was examining her quite afresh.
"Well," he said shortly, after a pause, adopting the benevolent tone of an uncle or even a great-uncle, "you'll be getting married one of these days." "I don't want to get married," she retorted obstinately, and with a harder glance.
"Then what do you want ?" "I don't know." She discovered great relief, even pleasure, in thus callously exposing her mind to a stranger.
Tapping his teeth with one thumb, he gazed at her, apparently in meditation upon her peculiar case.

At last he said: "I tell you what you ought to do.

You ought to go in for phonography." "Phonography ?" She was at a loss.
"Yes; Pitman's shorthand, you know." "Oh! shorthand--yes.

I've heard of it.