He got out and made a flourish as though to help me out of the car. I sat there and stared at him stonily.
"I'm not going into another store with you," I stated. "If you really want my advice on a gift, just bring it out here to the car and I'll tell you what I think about it. I'd even tell you what I think about you, if I weren't a lady."
"Madame, I assure you--" he protested. Then, his words apparently evoking the memory of my expression in the drug store, he turned away quickly. His shoulders were shaking as he went through the doorway of the candy store.
Presently, followed by an anxious salesgirl, he came out, carrying several attractive, cellophane-wrapped boxes. With a regal disdain that must have puzzled the salesgirl, I indicated that a box of chocolate covered dates was the choicest delicacy of the lot.
I was still in a bad mood that evening when I came back from cabin 15 and climbed up on the typewriter case on the kitchen chair, after sprinkling a clothesbasket full of clean clothes and getting them ready to iron. The difficulty of reading, and the headlights which clamored for my attention and turned out to belong to cars which were going so fast that it was obvious they weren't likely to stop, began to irritate me more than they ever had before.
Finally, after I had made three unsuccessful attempts to read one sentence through to the end, I snapped my book shut, sighed loudly for the benefit of Grant, who was reading on the davenport--and leaned hard, with violent disgust, against the back of the chair.
My disgust was much more violent when I found myself sprawling helplessly in the clothesbasket, like a huge turtle on its back. I had forgotten that the height of the typewriter case was enough to make the chair back--short enough to start with--practically nonexistent.
Grant came running to help me out of the clothesbasket. I looked at him sharply. Yes, he was smiling a little.
That settled it! The idea, him sitting and reading, and then laughing at me when I injured myself after working about fourteen hours in one stretch!
I'd fix him. I thanked him graciously for his help, smoothed the clothes in the basket, replaced the typewriter, and resumed my watch.