"The sooner you quit curlin' your side-hair and begin to learn that life's made up of statements and multigraphs, instead of love scenes on papier-mâché bridges and flashy fellows in checked suits and get-rich-quick schemes, the better off you're going to be."
The light in Goldie's face died out as suddenly as a Jack-o'-lantern when you blow on the taper.
"Aw, Miss Greg-or-ee!" Her voice was the downscale wail of an oboe. "Whatta you always picking on Harry Trimp for? He ain't ever done anything to you—and you said yourself when he brought them circular letters in that he was one handsome kid."
"Just the same, I knew when he came in here the second time hanging round you with them blue eyes and black lashes, and that batch of get-rich-quick letters, he was as phony as his scarf-pin."
"I glory in a fellow's spunk that can give up a clerking job and strike out for hisself—that's what I do!"
"He was fired—that's how he started out for himself. Ask Mae Pope; she knows a thing or two about him."
"Aw, Miss—"
"Wait until you have been dealing with them as long as I have! Once get a line on a man's correspondence, and you can see through him as easy as through a looking-glass with the mercury rubbed off."
The walls of Jericho fell at the blast of a ram's horn. Not so Miss Flint's frailer fortifications.
"The minute a fellow that doesn't belong to the society of pikers and gets a three-figure salary comes along, and can take a girl to a restaurant where they begin with horse-doovries instead of wiping your cutlery on the table-cloth and deciding whether you want the 'and' with your ham fried or scrambled—the minute a fellow like that comes along and learns one of us girls that taxi-cabs was made for something besides dodging, and pink roses for something besides florist windows—that minute they put on another white-slave play, and your friends begin to recite the doxology to music. Gee! It's fierce!"