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“Then perhaps, for the gentleman, a different career path?”
“I’ve tried a lot of them already,” he told me, following as I began walking to the cold room. “Did you know that people don’t normally start at the top?”
“Really?” I was proud of myself for sounding so innocent.
“Yeah. And even my dad was like, absolutely not. I don’t get it.”
“Extraordinary.” I held the door open for him.
“Should I get my coat, you think?”
“I do,” I assured him, and waited as he ran to get his jacket while Marc and Terri gave me pitying looks.
It was going to be a long day.
“What’s the difference between this one,” Bing asked, holding up one of the letters I’d pulled from the chest, “and this one again?”
“One is what we call an autograph, which means ‘in the hand of,’ not just the signature. So the whole letter is written by and signed by one person.”
“And the other?”
“That one there, you can see from the writing, is what we call a manuscript letter signed. That means it’s a letter in someone else’s hand—maybe a secretary—but signed by, in this case, Wallis Sutton Wellington.”
“Who owned the house last.”
“Correct.”
He exhaled sharply. “But what about the secretarial hand?”
“Very good. That is a piece written by a secretary or transcriber, but normally, for the most part, the term secretarial is used with presidential material. It means the signature is not authentic but written by someone else, and it’s our job to tell a real signature from a secretary.”
“Wouldn’t a secretary get in trouble for signing something for a president?”
“Not if, say, someone wanted permission to move artwork around in the White House or change a song for a celebration.”
“Got it.”
“I mean, think about all the things a president has to sign in a day.”
He nodded.
“It’s the same with celebrities.”
“This is at least a bit more interesting.”
I shook my head at him.
“What made you want to do this?”
“That’s a long answer.”
“I don’t care. We’re sorting letters about—what is a cotillion?”
“A dance.”
“Ohmygod, I’m gonna die,” he groaned. “Tell me more about you.”
“Well, you know I’m a lupine. An omega, to be exact.”
