She looked at me in contemplative appraisal. “What is it this time?”
I said, “I’m going to put on a show. I may get into an argument with a woman. You know the way women work me. I won’t be tough enough. I want you along for moral support.”
Bertha heaved a tremendous sigh that I could see rippling all the way up from her diaphragm. “At last,” she said, “you’re getting some sense. That’s about the only excuse you could have made that would have dragged me up and out after I’ve got ready for bed. What is it, that blonde?”
“I’ll tell you about it after we get started.”
She heaved herself up out of the hugh reclining chair and said acidly, “If you’re going to keep on giving the orders, you’d better raise my salary.”
“Let me have the income, and I will.”
She walked past me into the bedroom, the floor boards creaking under her weight as she walked. She flung back over her shoulder, “You’re getting delusions of grandeur,” and slammed the bedroom door.
I switched off the radio, dropped into a chair, stretched my feet out, and tried to relax. I knew there was a tough job ahead.
Bertha’s sitting-room was a clutter of odds and ends, tables, bric-a-brac, books, ash trays, bottles, dirty glasses, matches, magazines, and an assortment of odds and ends piled around in such confusion that I didn’t see how it was ever possible to get things dusted. There was only one clear place in the whole room, and that was where Bertha had her big chair stretched out, a magazine rack on one side, a smoking stand on the other. The radio was within easy reaching distance, and the doors of a little cabinet were open, showing an assortment of bottles.
When Bertha made herself comfortable, she settled down to make a good job of it, and thoroughly relaxed. She didn’t believe in halfway measures in anything that affected her personal comfort and convenience.