e met without the help of a third
party and have entered upon a charming friendship. They are rare, rarer
in fact than in fiction. It is banal to say that a girl can usually
tell. But she can, and if she has any doubt (and this is true of all her
relations with men) she should have no doubt. She should stop where she
is.

Where men and girls work together in the same building or in buildings
near one another they often go to the same restaurant for lunch. It is
natural that they should sometimes sit together at the same tables. It
is correct for a man to sit at a table where there are already only
girls (if the girls are willing), but it is not correct for a girl to
sit at a table where there are already only men (however willing the men
may be). In these mixed groups each person pays for his or her own
lunch. It is not even necessary for the man, or the men, as the case may
be, to offer to do so, and it is a distinct breach of the rules of
etiquette for a girl to allow a man to pay for her lunch under such
circumstances.

The only time when it is correct for a man and a girl who are associated
together in business to have lunch, with him the host and her the guest,
is when the engagement is made ahead of time as for any other social
affair. On such an occasion he should be as attentive as he would in any
other circumstances, taking care of her wraps and placing her chair if
the waiter is not at hand to do it, suggesting dishes he thinks perhaps
she will like, and making himself as generally useful and agreeable as
it is possible for him to be. A point about which considerable breath is
wasted is whether a man should enter a restaurant with the girl
following or whether he should allow her to lead the way. It makes no
material difference one way or the other, but usually he permits her to
go ahead and follows closely enough behind to open the doors for her and
to receive whatever instructions the head waiter has to offer.

If a man should enter a restaurant and find a girl whom he knows already
seated he may join her if he thinks he will be not unwelcome, but this
does not make it incumbent upon him to pay for her lunch. He may offer
to do it, but it is a matter that rests with the girl. If she does not
care to develop his acquaintance she should not permit it, but if the
two are good friends or if she feels that he is a man she would like to
know, she may give him her check to settle along with his own. A girl is
he