"All right, Fanny," said Burdon without looking around. "Leave the checks. I'll attend to them."
It seemed to Helen that the girl went out slowly, a sudden spot of colour on each of her cheeks.
"You call her Fanny!" Helen asked, when, the door shut again.
"Yes," he said, busy with the checks. "They do more for you, when you are decent with them."
"You think so?"
He caught the meaning in her voice and sighed a little as he sprawled his signature on the next check. "I often wish I was a sour, old crab," he said, half to Helen and half to himself. "I'd get through life a whole lot better than I do."
Mary had come to the door then, ready to start for home. When Helen passed through the outer office she saw the girl again, her cheek on her palm, her head bent over her desk, dipping her pen in the red ink and then pushing the point through her blotter pad. None of this was lost on Helen, nor the girl's frown, nor the row of crimson blotches that stretched across the blotter.
"She'll go in now to get those checks," thought Helen, as the car started up the hill, and it was just then that Mary started to warn her about going out so much with Burdon.
Once in the night Helen awoke and lay for a long time looking at the silhouette of the windows. "…I wonder what they said to each other…." she thought.
The next morning Mary was going through her mail at the office when she came to an envelope with a newspaper clipping in it. This had been cut from the society notes of the New Bethel Herald.