“There now, Ben,” said Betty, holding Bennie a little awkwardly in her arms in the soar-kart. They had moved out so the Stoddards could move right in. Now they were on their way in to their [p 34]  reserved suite at Amalgamated’s Guest-ville. “You were absolutely marvellous. Imagine selling all three of them!”

[p 

34

]  

“There wasn’t anything to it, actually.”

“Ben, how can you say that? Nobody else could have done it. It was a sales masterpiece. And just think. Now salesmen all over the hemisphere are going to follow your sales plan. Doesn’t it make you proud? Happy? Ben, you aren’t going to be like that again?”

No, of course he wasn’t. He was pleased and proud. Anyway, the Old Man would be, and that, certainly, was something. A man had to feel good about winning the approval of Amalgamated’s grand Old Man. And it did seem to make Betty happy.

But the actual selling of the fool house and even the two other, identical houses on the other side of the hill—he just couldn’t seem to get much of a glow over it. He had done it; and what had he done? It was the insurance and the toothbrushes all over again, and the old nervous, sour feeling inside.

“At least we do have a vacation trip coming out of it, hon. The O.M. practically promised it yesterday, if our sell sold. We could—”

could—

“—go back to that queer new ‘Do It Yourself’ camp up on the lake you insisted on dragging me to the last week of our vacation last summer. Ben, really!” He was going to be like that. She knew it.

“Well, even you admitted it was some fun.”

“Oh, sort of, I suppose. For a little while. Once you got used to the whole place without one single machine that could think or do even the simplest little thing by itself. So, well, almost like being savages. Do you think it would be safe for Bennie? We can’t watch him all the time, you know.”

“People used to manage in the old days. And remember those people, the Burleys, who were staying up there?”

“That queer, crazy bunch who went there for a vacation when the Camp was first opened and then just stayed? 

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