"I have become so accustomed to hotel trade that I forgot that some hands may be earning salaries instead of drawing incomes."

Her manner was unobtrusive, and he laughed quietly.

"You are quite a student of types, Miss Sprunt."

"Wouldn't I have to be, Mr. Chase, me doing as many as a hundred fingers a day, and something different coming with each ten of them?"

"You are delightful," he said, letting his amused eyes rest upon her; "but I fear you've mysterious methods of divination."

"Oh, I don't know," she said, airily. "Just take you, for example. I don't need an X-ray to see that there isn't a Fifth Avenue tailor sign stitched inside your coat. It doesn't take any mind-reader to know that you come in from the Sixth Avenue entrance and not from the elevator. Besides, when you come to live in a lobster palace you usually have your claws done to match your shell. I'd have given you a dull white finish without your even asking for it."

"I see where I stand with you, Miss Sprunt."

"Oh, it isn't that, Mr. Chase. I guess, if the truth was known, the crawfish stand better with me than the lobsters."

Mr. Chase's fingers closed lightly over hers.

"I believe you mean what you say," he said.