For the next few moments the customer neglected the fashion magazine which she had found--apparently a souvenir of some other absent-minded patron--on the seat of the chair next that one of her own casual choice.
She stared blankly at the smudged and spotted bill of fare propped up, in its wooden frame, against an armour-plate-china sugar-bowl. She was deeply intrigued by the mystery of human frailty as exemplified by her reckless extravagance in ordering that superfluous bit of pastry. Miss Manvers's purse contained a single coin of silver, the quarter of a dollar; being precisely the sum of her entire fortune. Her ham and beans would cost fifteen cents, the coffee and the napoleon five cents each. In other words, she would be penniless when she had paid her score--and Heaven only knew for how long afterward.
Her lips moved without sound in her worn and pallid face. "What's the difference?" she bully-ragged her conscience. "I might as well be broke as the way I am!"
The argument was painfully reasonable; that inmate of New York who has but five cents has nothing.
On the other hand, there was nothing whatever to be advanced in extenuation of her folly in thus inviting indigestion--a passion for pastry is its own punishment no less than any other infatuation to which mortal flesh is prone. Sally was morally certain she would suffer, and that severely, before nightfall.
"Well, what of it?" she grumbled sullenly. "If I die for it, it's cheap at the price! And, no matter what happens, it can't be any hotter afterward than it is now."
Somehow soothed by this cynical reflection, she sat up, mopped her flushed forehead with a handkerchief of which she was not proud, and drank thirstily of her tumbler of ice-water.
The grateful draft reminded her that she had actually been athirst ever since noon. It was now almost three o'clock--thanks to which fact she might eat in the comparative comfort of a lunchroom which boasted no patron other than herself. But she was little appreciative of this boon; she comprehended her surroundings with just a little languid resentment of their smug cleanliness and their atmosphere impregnated with effluvia of cheap edibles. But if these seemed offensive she would have been willing to overlook them on certain conditions--as she proved when the waitress reappeared with her order.
"I don't suppose--" Miss Manvers began, but hesitated.
"What say?"