“Yes.”
“Wouldn’t she tell them if you took Carlotta from her?”
“She might.”
“But you don’t think she would?”
“I think I could take steps to prevent that.”
“What steps?”
The visitor smiled. “After all, Mrs. Cool, I came here to employ you, not to submit to a cross-examination concerning my personal affairs.”
“Go ahead,” Bertha said dryly. “I guess I ask too damned many questions. You’re going to pay for the time, so do it your own way — the telling of what you have to tell.”
“In many ways,” Bertha’s visitor continued, “Mrs. Goldring has made Carlotta a good mother. In other ways she has been very, very foolish. She is a vain woman, one who is angling for a husband and trying to use the same bait with which she caught her first husband.”
“I’ve seen a lot of life, Mrs. Cool. Probably you have, too. The women in the forties and fifties, even in the sixties, who get the desirable matrimonial catches — the widowers who have been trained to double-harness and have money — are the ones who are plump, comfortable, contented, and not too anxious to get married. The ones who starve themselves with diet, try to assume the vivacity of a young woman in the twenties, who appear coy and kittenish, never get to first base. Make no mistake, Mrs. Cool, a mature woman has something that appeals to an older man, something that the young filly can never have. On the other hand, the youngster has the freshness of youth, the rounded firmness of body that an older woman doesn’t have. In order to get anywhere, the older woman needs to use her own weapons and not try to steal the weapons of the younger woman. Once she does that she’s licked.”