204 The Girl and the Habit
countess of compliments and coin, leading lady of love and luncheon. You take from her a smile and a Canadian dime, and you go your way uncomplaining. You count the cheery word or two that she tosses you as misers count their treasures; and you pocket the change for a five uncomputed. Perhaps the brass-bound inaccessibility multiplies her charms anyhow, she is a shirt-waisted angel, immaculate, trim, manicured, seductive, bright-eyed, ready, alert Psyche, Circe, and Ate in one, separating you from your cir- culating medium after your sirloin medium.
The young men who broke bread at Hinkle's never settled with the cashier without an exchange of badinage and open compliment. Many of them went to greater lengths and dropped promissory hints of theatre tickets and chocolates. The older men spoke plainly of orange blossoms, generally withering the tentative petals by after-allusions to Harlem flats. One broker who had been squeezed by copper proposed to Miss Merriam more regularly than he ate.
During a brisk luncheon hour Miss Mer- riam's conversation, while she took money for checks, would run something like this :
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