“You want a cup of coffee?”

“I wouldn’t mind.”

Phoebe returned to the urns and drew a cup and brought it back. Purvy watched her broad hips going and coming under the white uniform, but he didn’t get the pleasure out of it that most fellows would have got. He stuck his nose into the steam rising from the coffee and took a couple of long sniffs.

“Smells good, Pheeb,” he said. “Thanks a lot.”

He didn’t offer to pay for it, because it was understood that it wasn’t expected. Free coffee was a kind of tribute to his long devotion to the trains. Sometimes he bought a sandwich or a couple of doughnuts or something of the sort, and for these he was expected to pay, but never for coffee.

(cf. Flora, Fletcher. Let Me Kill You, Sweetheart!.)