They always shows their surprise in their fingers. He says, “How did you find that out?” Says I, “I got my own but you needn’t worry my business is to listen to the gentlemen’s.”
“Is that a part of the job?” says he and I tells him it’s the principal part. “They want to tell their troubles to some other woman;” and I looks up, and there is wrinkles of fun in the corner of his eyes.
But they don’t last long he looks serious again and says, “It may be some other woman could give me a little advice just now.” I says, “She can if she’s the right woman.” But still he’s kind of hesitating to take the plunge so I give him another push. “Is it some mystery of the female soul you can’t make out?”
“It is just that,” he says; and I asks, “She can’t make up her mind that she loves you?” He laughs and says, “No, it ain’t anything like that, you been reading novels. I am a married man and got three children growing up,” he says. “Ah, me!” says I. “You should hear some of the stories about married gentlemen!”
I looks at him again and see he’s what they call a go-getter. First I think maybe he’s the secretary of the Hardware Dealers’ Association that’s in town but then I guess he’s a lawyer come to lobby here in our national capital. So I rubs away at his nails and says, “Is it the wife?” He thinks for a minute and then all of a sudden it busts out, “My God!” And then he waits again and says kind of solemn-like, “Tell me this do all women have to go crazy?”
I make a guess at his age and I says, “How old is your wife—if you know?” “She’s forty-two,” says he. “Oh, yes,” says I; and then, “She can’t make up her mind what she wants, and she can’t sit still in one room—”
“Good God,” says he, “it is worse than that, she is got the angina pectoris.”
“Oh, poor soul!” I says. I hadn’t never heard of it but it sounded serious.
“But it’s different from any sort of angina pectoris you ever heard of,” he goes on. “It’s a travelling angina pectoris. One week it’s in the shoulders and the next week it’s gone to the stomach and the week after that it’s in the knee.”
“I suppose you’ve took her to the doctors?” says I.