Della Street surveyed him with exaggerated gravity. “Yes,” she said, “in your case it is. You’re working. You might hoist a drink or two, but it would run off your back like water off a duck’s stomach.” Lone Bedford laughed gleefully. Della Street turned on her reproachfully. “I didn’t say that accidentally,” she said. “I said it on purpose. It was a wisecrack.”
“I know it, dearie. That’s why I laughed.”
Della Street said, “No, one woman doesn’t laugh that way at another woman’s wisecracks — not when there’s a man in the party. She laughs courteously and politely. You didn’t laugh politely. You thought I was trying to say that his drinks ran off his back... Oh, skip it. It isn’t important. Who wants to waste drinks on a duck’s back?”
Lone Bedford said to Mason, “Your secretary is younger than I thought she was.”
“Indeed,” Mason said.
Della Street laughed. “What she’s getting at is that I’m too inexperienced in holding my birthdays down to have seen many of them.”
Lone Bedford said, “After all, my dear, you’ve only had five or six highballs.”
Della Street let her eyes get large and round, as she looked up at Perry Mason. “Imagine,” she said, “being so calloused that one can use the word ‘only’ in connection with five or six highballs.”
Mason said, “Well, it sounds as though it had been a perfectly gorgeous birthday.”
“Don’t use the past tense,” Lone told him. “Her birthday isn’t over until midnight. And now that you’ve put in an appearance, we’re filled with new ideas for celebrating... That reminds me, I have to put in a call myself. I’ll only be a minute.”