Having discharged this wood-pulp arrow at her spouse, Mrs. Bowser tapped her front teeth with her pencil for three seconds; then, briskly: “Gussing, take another memo.”
“Yes, Bowser,” said Miss Gussing, who had a bass voice. Mrs. Bowser herself insisted on this method of address; it gave her a hearty man-to-man feeling with Miss Gussing. With Mr. Bowser the case was somewhat different; his male hired help with salaries of more than five thousand dollars a year called him J. S. B. as more intimate than Mister and not so presumptuous as Sanford. Lesser employees called him Chief, and still lesser ones Mistered him.
“Memo,” dictated Mrs. Bowser, “to Mr. Bowser.”
“Shall I incorporate it with the first one?” asked Miss Gussing.
Mrs. Bowser gave her a look fraught more with pain than anger.
“Gussing,” she said, the sweetness of patience struggling with the vinegar of reproof, “must I remind you that the rule of The Bowsers, Inc., is: One subject to one memo? Simplicity, Gussing, is one of the First Flowers in the Garden of Organization. M-m-m-m-m—not bad, that. Take that down, Gussing. I may be able to use that phrase in the Bedfello—the Hot Water Bottle Beautiful—campaign. Now take a memo—a separate one if you please, to Mr. Bowser.”
The chastened Gussing suspended her pencil over a virgin sheet.
“In re name for new cleaning powder,” said Mrs. Bowser. “I have noted with care list of names for new cleaning powder suggested by you. I do not check with any of them.
“ ‘GARFINKLE’S Pride of the Bathroom’ has a high-class appeal but is too long.
“ ‘KLASSIC-KLEENER—Out, darned spot’—is good and would permit a tie-up with Shakespere in the ads, but the profanity might offend some possible buyers.