“Did I hear a seduction!” Bertha exclaimed. “I heard a whole damn medley of seductions. I realize now why they talk about the young man of today tomcatting around. When they say that they don’t mean a guy’s prowling around so much as that he’s getting out in some public place and yowling about it.”
“I gather that you didn’t sleep well.”
Bertha said, “I didn’t. I can assure you of one thing, though.”
“What?”
“I gave a group of young women a lungful of advice from that balcony.”
“How did they react?”
Bertha said, “One of them got mad. One of them looked ashamed and went home, and the others stood there and laughed at me — starting to pass wisecracks right back at me.”
“What did you do then?” I asked.
“I blasted ‘em,” Bertha said with a vicious snap of her words.
“Did they stay blasted?”