"Oh, you don't want to be unkind!" She shook her head. "No, don't
pretend. You think it's silly. But really, Mr. Burckhardt, you
wouldn't think so if you knew more about the Feckle. Let me show you
this little booklet--"
Burckhardt got back from lunch a full hour late. It wasn't only the
girl who delayed him. There had been a curious interview with a little
man named Swanson, whom he barely knew, who had stopped him with
desperate urgency on the street--and then left him cold.
But it didn't matter much. Mr. Barth, for the first time since
Burckhardt had worked there, was out for the day--leaving Burckhardt
stuck with the quarterly tax returns.
What did matter, though, was that somehow he had signed a purchase
order for a twelve-cubic-foot Feckle Freezer, upright model,
self-defrosting, list price $625, with a ten per cent "courtesy"
discount--"Because of that _horrid_ affair this morning, Mr.
Burckhardt," she had said.
And he wasn't sure how he could explain it to his wife.
* * * * *
He needn't have worried. As he walked in the front door, his wife said
almost immediately, "I wonder if we can't afford a new freezer, dear.
There was a man here to apologize about that noise and--well, we got
to talking and--"
She had signed a purchase order, too.
It had been the damnedest day, Burckhardt thought later, on his way up
to bed. But the day wasn't done with him yet. At the head of the
stairs, the weakened spring in the electric light switch refused to
click at all. He snapped it back and forth angrily and, of course,
succeeded in jarring the tumbler out of its pins. The wires shorted
and every light in the house went out.
"Damn!" said Guy Burckhardt.
"Fuse?" His wife shrugged sleepily. "Let it go till the morning,
dear."