“I met Mr. Fletcher, or rather he met me, in a rental library,” said Mrs. Fletcher with dignity, as she watched the net come down over her head.

“Honey, me an’ Fred, we met in a rumble seat eight months ago and we was practically on what you might call the way to the altar inside of half an hour,” said Leota in a guttural voice, and bit a bobby pin open. “Course it don’t last. Mrs. Pike says nothin’ like that ever lasts.”

“Mr. Fletcher and myself are as much in love as the day we married,” said Mrs. Fletcher belligerently as Leota stuffed cotton into her ears.

“Mrs. Pike says it don’t last,” repeated Leota in’ a louder voice. “Now go git under the dryer. You can turn yourself on, can’t you? I’ll be back to comb you out. Durin’ lunch I promised to give Mrs. Pike a facial. You know—free. Her bein’ in the business, so to speak.”

“I bet she needs one,” said Mrs. Fletcher, letting the swing-door fly back against Leota. “Oh, pardon me.”

A week later, on time for her appointment, Mrs. Fletcher sank heavily into Leota’s chair after first removing a drug-store rental book, called Life Is Like That, from the seat. She stared in a discouraged way into the mirror.

“You can tell it when I’m sitting down, all right,” she said.

Leota seemed preoccupied and stood shaking out a lavender cloth. She began to pin it around Mrs. Fletcher’s neck in silence.

“I said you sure can tell it when I’m sitting straight on and coming at you this way,” Mrs. Fletcher said.

“Why, honey, naw you can’t,” said Leota gloomily. “Why, I’d never know. If somebody was to come up to me on the street and say, ‘Mrs. Fletcher is pregnant!’ I’d say, ‘Heck, she don’t look it to me.’”

“If a certain party hadn’t found it out and spread it around, it wouldn’t be too late even now,” said Mrs. Fletcher frostily, but Leota was almost choking her with the cloth, pinning it so tight, and she couldn’t speak clearly. She paddled her hands in the air until Leota wearily loosened her.

“Listen, honey, you’re just a virgin compared to Mrs. Montjoy,” Leota was going on, still absent-minded. She bent Mrs. Fletcher back in the chair and, sighing, tossed liquid from a teacup on to her head and dug both hands into her scalp. “You know Mrs. Montjoy—her husband’s that premature-grey-headed fella?”

“She’s in the Trojan Garden Club, is all I know,” said Mrs. Fletcher.