Do not, ascetic reader, gag at the unsocratic plane. True, Max Meltzer had neither the grain nor the leisure of a sophist, a capacity for tenses or an appreciation of Kant. He had never built a bridge, led a Bible class, or attempted the first inch of the five-foot bookshelf. But on a two-figure salary he subscribed an annual donation to a skin-and-cancer hospital, wore non-reversible collars, and maintained a smile that turned upward like the corners of a cycle moon. Remember, then, ascetic reader, that a rich man once kicked a leper; Kant's own heart, that it might turn the world's heart outward, burst of pain; and in the granite cañon of Wall Street, one smile in every three-score and ten turns upward.
Sadie Barnet met Max Meltzer's cycle-moon smile with the blazing eyes of scorn, and her lips, quivering to a smile, met in a straight line that almost ironed out the curves.
"'Cause you're stuck on me! That's a swell guess. Gee! you're as funny as a sob, you are."
The words scuttered from her lips like sharp hailstones and she glanced at him sidewise over a hump of uplifted shoulder and down the length of one akimbo arm.
"'Cause you're stuck on me! Huh!"
Max Meltzer leaned across a counter display of fringed breakfast napkins.
"Ain't that a good reason, Miss Sadie? It's a true one."
"You're one swell little guesser, you are not. You couldn't get inside a riddle with a can-opener. 'Cause you're stuck on me! Gee!"
"Well, I am."
"I didn't ask you why you was like a bottle of glue. I asked you why you was like a rubber band."