"Quite right," Mr. Bienenflug said. "You have ample grounds for a limited divorce."
While retaining or, rather, as a dramatic producer would say, registering the posture of listening, Mr. Bienenflug mentally reviewed all J. Montgomery Fieldstone's successes of the past year, which included the "Head of the Family," a drama, and Miss Goldie Raymond in the Viennese knockout of two continents, "Rudolph, Where Have You Been." He therefore estimated the alimony at two hundred dollars a week and a two-thousand dollar counsel fee; and he was proceeding logically though subconsciously to a contrasting of the respective motor-car refinement displayed by a ninety-horse-power J.C.B. and the new 1914 model Samsoun—both six cylinders—when Mrs. Fieldstone spoke again.
"Listen, Mr. Bienenflug!" she protested. "I don't want no divorce. I should get a divorce at my time of life, with four children already! What for?"
"Not an absolute divorce," Mr. Bienenflug explained; "just a separation."
"A separation!" Mrs. Fieldstone exclaimed in a manner so agitated that she forgot to say, "Listen, Mr. Bienenflug!" "If I would want a separation I don't need to come to a lawyer, Mr. Bienenflug. Any married woman if she is crazy in the head could go home to her folks to live, Mr. Bienenflug, without paying money to a lawyer he should advise her to do so, Mr. Bienenflug; which I got six married sisters, Mr. Bienenflug—and before I would go and live with any of them, Mr. Bienenflug, my husband could make me every day fresh a blue eye—and still I wouldn't leave him. No, Mr. Bienenflug, I ain't asking you you should get me a separation. What I want is you should get him to come home and stay home."
"But a lawyer can't do that, Mrs. Fieldstone."
"I thought a lawyer could do anything," Mrs. Fieldstone said, "if he was paid for it, Mr. Bienenflug, which I got laying in savings bank over six hundred dollars; and——"
Mr. Bienenflug desired to hear no more. He uncrossed his legs and dropped the penholder abruptly. At the same time he struck a handbell on his desk to summon an office boy, who up to the opening night of the "Head of the Family," six months before, had responded to an ordinary electric pushbutton. But anyone who has ever seen the "Head of the Family"—and, in fact, any one who knows anything about dramatic values—will appreciate how much more effective from a theatrical standpoint the handbell is than the pushbutton. There is something about the imperative Bing! of the handbell that holds an audience. It is, in short, drama—though drama has its disadvantages in real life; for Mr. Bienenflug, after striking the handbell six times without response, was obliged to go to the door and shout "Ralph!" in a wholly untheatrical voice.
"What's the matter with you?" he said when the office boy appeared. "Can't you hear when you're rung for?"
Ralph murmured that he thought it was a—now—Polyclinic ambulance out in the street.