Everything about it grated upon her--and the note was so eminently characteristic. She observed critically the "My dear Miss Dunbar," which he considered more intimate than "Dear Miss Dunbar." She disliked the round vowels formed with such care that they looked piffling, and the elaborately shaded consonants. The stiffness, the triteness of his phraseology, and his utter lack of humor, made his letters dull reading but most of all his inexact use of words irritated her--it made him seem so hopeless--far more so than bad spelling. She even detested the glazed note paper which she was sure was a "broken lot" bought at a bargain in a department store.
"To-night I have a matter of supreme importance to impart," she read, "make every effort to join me. The evening may prove as eventful to you as to me, so do not disappoint me, Mignonne."
"Mignonne!" Her lips curled. "Idiot! Imbecile! Ignoramus!" Savagely--"Donkey!"
She leaned a shoulder against the cold bricks of the warehouse, her head drooped and a tear slipped down her cheek to turn to frost on the dark fur of her muff.
Helen was too analytical and she had had the opportunity of knowing and observing men in too many walks of life not to have by this time a fairly good insight into Sprudell's character. At least she understood him to the extent of reading his motives and interpreting his actions with tolerable accuracy. She tried to be charitable and endeavored not to dwell upon the traits which, in the light of his lover's attitude, made him ridiculous. When she received tender offering of stale fruit-cake and glucose jam from a cut-rate grocer, large boxes of candy from an obscure confectioner, and other gifts betraying the penurious economy which always tempered his generosity, she endeavored to assure herself that it came merely from the habit of saving in small ways which many self-made men had in common. She dwelt resolutely upon his integrity, upon the acumen which had made him a business success; yet in her heart she could not help likening him to a garment of shoddy material aping the style of elegance. While endeavoring to palliate these small offenses Helen knew perfectly that they were due to the fact that he was innately what was known in the office vernacular as a "cheap skate," striving to give the impression of generosity at a minimum of expense.
Helen had grown sensitive about her cough and shrank from comment upon it. She did her best to stifle it and she herself spoke of it lightly; but to-day, when she came into the warm air of the office after the nightmare of a wait on the corner and the long, cold ride afterward, it set her coughing violently, so violently that it attracted the attention of her neighbor, who called over the partition jocularly but with a note of seriousness in his voice-"We'll have to ship you to Colorado, Miss Dunbar, if you go on like that!"