Bertha Cool positively beamed at us. “You two go ahead,” she said, “and enjoy yourselves. I’ve had dinner. It’s been a hard day, and all I want right now is to get home where I can get into some lounging pyjamas and relax. I guess I’m getting old. A hard day uses me up and leaves me limp as a dishrag.”
“Nonsense,” Marian said. “You’re a young woman.”
“I have to carry all this fat around with me,” Bertha explained.
“It isn’t fat. It looks like muscle,” Marian insisted. “You’re big-boned, big-framed, that’s all.”
“Thank you, my child.”
I took Marian’s hand and said, “Let’s go, Marian.”
Bertha Cool locked the desk, dropped the key in her purse, got to her feet, and said, “Don’t bother about taking me home, Donald. I’ll go in a cab.”
She walked across the office with us with that peculiar, effortless walk of hers which seemed as smooth as the progress of a yacht on a calm sea. Bertha never waddled. She didn’t make a hard job of walking. She moved with short steps, never hurrying herself, but keeping up a steady pace regardless of whether it was hot or cold, up’ hill or down.
When we were in a restaurant, Marian said, “I think she’s wonderful, Donald. She seems so competent, so self-reliant.”
“She is,” I said.