“No,” Alma Hunter said a little too quickly. “I never approved of—well, of the idea. Through Sandra, I knew things about him—I think I’d prefer not to go into that if you don’t mind.”

“I don’t mind,” Mrs. Cool said. “If you’re referring to facts which don’t enter into the case, they’re none of my damn business. If they do, I’d a lot rather find them out for myself, at so many dollars a day, than have you tell me about them. Write your own ticket, dearie.”

I saw the glint of a smile in Alma Hunter’s eyes.

“And don’t mind me when I cuss,” Mrs. Cool went on, “because I like profanity, loose clothes, and loose talk. I want to be comfortable. Nature intended me to be fat. I put in ten years eating salads, drinking skimmed milk, and toying with dry toast. I wore girdles that pinched my waist, form-building brassières, and spent half of my time standing on bathroom scales.

“And what the hell did I do it for? Just to get a husband!”

“You got one?” Alma Hunter asked, her eyes showing her interest.

“Yes.”

Miss Hunter was discreetly silent. Mrs. Cool resented the implications of her silence. “It wasn’t that way at all,” she said. “But hell, this isn’t the time for a dissertation on my private life.”

“I’m so sorry,” Miss Hunter said. “Really, Mrs. Cool I didn’t mean to be prying. I was just terribly interested. I’m—well, I have problems of my own—I don’t like to hear people talk cynically about marriage. I think that when a woman really works to make a success of marriage, she can make the home so attractive that her husband wants to be there all the time. After two—”

“And why the hell should a woman do that for any man?” Bertha Cool interrupted in a calm, level voice. “My God, men don’t own the world.”

“But it’s a woman’s place in life,” Alma Hunter said. “It’s part of the biological structure.”

Bertha Cool looked over the tops of her glasses. “If you want to talk biological urges,” she said, “talk with Donald. He knows all about the courtship of microbes.”

“Men aren’t microbes,” Alma Hunter said.