Page:Christopher Morley--Tales from a rolltop desk.djvu/30

 it was several days before he had opportunity for further speech with Miss Denver. Moretti's is a fifty-cent table d'hôte, and his regimen was calculated on a forty-cent limit for dinner; but after this meeting with the Oblique Review's fairest abonnée he haunted the place for some evenings. Then one day, taking in some copy for a book jacket to be approved by the sales manager, he encountered Miss Denver in the sample room. During working hours she was "strictly business," and he admired the trim white blouse, the satin-smooth neck, and the small, capable hands jotting pothooks in her notebook as she took a long telephone call. She put down the receiver, and smiled pleasantly at him.

"Don't you go to Moretti's any more?" he asked, and then regretted the brusqueness of the question.

"Sometimes," she said. "Usually when I buy the Oblique I go to a Hartford Lunch. I can sit there as long as I want and read, with doughnuts and coffee."

Lester had a curious feeling of oscillation somewhere to the left of his middle waistcoat button. As the little girl said on the Coney Island switchback, he felt as though he had freckles on his stomach.