“Now you see why it is necessary for me to keep myself in the background until I am very, very certain that you can do what I want.”
“What do you want?”
“Before I tell you what I want, I want you to understand my position.”
“Before you take up any of my time,” Bertha stated firmly, “I want you to understand mine.”
“What is it?”
“I work for money. Money talks in this business. Sympathy I give outside office hours. I can’t take a hard-luck story down to the bank, write my name across the back of it, shove it through the window and get a deposit entered to my account.”
“I understand that perfectly.”
“If this is a hard-luck story, I’m not interested. I just didn’t want to have any misapprehension on your part.”
“There is none, Mrs. Cool.”
“All right, go ahead.”