arduarn:
Provide a conversion function in your class like:operator int() const { return mint; }
Perfectly reasonable to do when used judiciously.
Thanks. That's the syntax I was looking for. And, I learned something about the language. The term I was groping for is "user-defined conversion".
Unfortunately, this site: User-defined conversion function - cppreference.com
is long on formalism and short on practical usage advice.