“Fry me for an oyster,” Bertha said, “pickle me for a herring, and can me for a sardine. I’m a poor fish.”
“But I don’t understand.”
“Just go ahead. Tell me the rest of it.”
“Well, that’s about all there is to it. I got up the next morning and felt dizzy. I called the doctor, and he suggested I should take a complete rest. I didn’t have any money on hand, but I had a little money coming. I thought that perhaps I could arrange something so I could— Well, I knew that Mrs. Cranning, the housekeeper, had a housekeeping fund from which she paid bills; and I thought perhaps I could get a little salary advance on that. I suppose I should tell you the man I was working for had died rather suddenly—”
“I know all about that,” Bertha said. “Tell me about the money angle.”
“Well, I went to Mrs. Cranning, and she didn’t have enough to spare to enable me to do just what I wanted to do, but she told me to go in and lie down and she’d see what she could do. Well, she certainly did a splendid job. The insurance company made a perfectly splendid adjustment.”
“And what did it do?”
“They agreed with my doctor that what I needed was a complete rest for a month or six weeks, and that I should go to some place where I wouldn’t have a thing in the world to worry about, where I wouldn’t have any of my old contacts or associations to bother me. My employer had died, and I was going to be out of a job, anyway. Well, the insurance company agreed to send me here, pay every cent of expenses, give me my salary for the two months I was here. When I left, they were to give me a cheque for five hundred dollars and guarantee to find me a job. Isn’t that generous?”
“Did you sign anything?” Bertha asked.
“Oh yes, a complete agreement — a release I guess it’s called.”