Bertha Cool sighed, and the sigh rippled the loose flesh of her stomach and breasts into jelly-like action. “Now listen,” she said, “my marriage is the one thing on earth I am touchy about. Some day Donald’s going to hear from someone all about what a bitch I was and how I treated my husband. I’ll probably tell him the whole story myself, but I’ll be damned careful I do it after office hours—unless I do it on your time, dearie—but for God’s sake don’t get married with the idea of putting a man upon a pedestal and yourself down on your hands and knees, scraping cobwebs out of the corner. You keep on doing that, and some day a cute little trick will look up at your husband with big blue eyes, and you’ll find that you’re in the place you made for yourself, just a damn floor scraper with rough hands, sharp features, and calloused knees—I know what you’re thinking, that your husband won’t be like that, but all husbands are like that.”

“But, Mrs. Cool—”

“All right, if you want to go into details, listen to what happened in my case. And you listen, too, Donald. It’ll do you good.”

“It doesn’t make any difference to me,” I said. “For all I care, you could have—”

“Shut up,” she said. “I’m your boss. Don’t interrupt me when I’m talking.” She turned back to Alma Hunter and said, “You get that idea about husbands out of your head, or you’ll be unhappy as long as you live. My husband was an average specimen—as husbands go, and that’s not very far. I kept on my diet until the glamour wore off, then I commenced to look across the breakfast table at him and wonder what the hell I was getting in return for what I was giving. He could eat peaches and cream, a big bowl of oatmeal swimming in butter, ham and eggs, coffee with thick cream, with two teaspoonfuls of sugar, and never put on a pound. He ate breakfasts like that right in front of my face. I sat across the table from him with my stomach begging me on its bended knees for just one spoonful of oatmeal, and I broke off dry toast and nibbled at little pieces of it so one piece would last through my husband’s breakfast.

“And then the day came when he told me he had to be away in Chicago on business. I was suspicious and hired a detective to shadow him. He took his secretary and went down to Atlantic City. I got the report by telephone on Monday morning just as we were sitting down to breakfast.”

Alma Hunter’s eyes were sparkling.

“You divorced him?” she asked.