We looked at the person, a fat and clammy merchant with a bunch of colored cheques in his flabby fist, the sort of human hippo who wears a pink shirt with a Palm Beach suit, and perspires on the end of the nose. We looked coldly down him from the gaudy band on his Panama, to the gilded buckle of his belt—everything below that was concealed by the overhang—but we couldn't think of a darn thing to say. Nothing suitable for a bank, that is.
Fortunately the lady was more than equal to the occasion. She raised her eyebrows and looked at the cheques he held.
"Do you want to cash those?" she asked in silvery tones of hauteur.
"I do," he said with unabashed assurance, "if you can spare the time—and a hand."
"Well, then you had better run out and get someone to identify you—perhaps one of the other butchers might be willing."
We could see the ripples of rage run up the back of that fat financier's neck. He turned a rich magenta, and the diamond on his little finger wobbled about as though he were trying to send a distress message by heliograph.
"Where—where's the Manager?" he spluttered. "I want the Manager. I'll report you, that's what I'll do—you—you minx!"
"Second door at the left of the main entrance," she said sweetly, and reached for a ledger. She did not seem flustered in the least, but our little conversazione was over—this sort of interruption makes it so difficult to recapture the first fine careless rapture.
It was our own fault. We shouldn't have gone in at an hour when business men were likely to be shouldering their way up to the financial trough. In order to take advantage of the social possibilities of present-day banking, it is best to call early—say, around ten o'clock. Then the commercial machine has not got properly under way and little flowers of romance may be made to bloom in the arid paths of business.
But, of course, one mustn't go too early. One must give the girls a chance to exchange their little confidences with one another about the sort of time they had the night before, and what canoe club he belongs to, and how many fox-trots she had with him, and what she said to Reggie when Reggie objected to her going around with a former aviator—aviators presumably being men of flighty notions of morality—and the other vital topics that ladies discuss the morning after.