night as demands pounded their doors like a tidal
wave.

One laboratory promised the vaccine in ten days; another said a week.
The first actually appeared in three weeks and two days, to be soaked up
in the space of three hours by the thirsty sponge of cold-weary
humanity. Express planes were dispatched to Europe, to Asia, to Africa
with the precious cargo, a million needles pierced a million hides, and
with a huge, convulsive sneeze mankind stepped forth into a new era.

* * * * *

There were abstainers, of course. There always are.

"It doesn't bake eddy differets how much you talk," Ellie Dawson cried
hoarsely, shaking her blonde curls. "I dod't wadt eddy cold shots."

"You're being totally unreasonable," Phillip said, glowering at his wife
in annoyance. She wasn't the sweet young thing he had married, not this
evening. Her eyes were puffy, her nose red and dripping. "You've had
this cold for two solid months now, and there just isn't any sense to
it. It's making you miserable. You can't eat, you can't breathe, you
can't sleep."

"I dod't wadt eddy cold shots," she repeated stubbornly.

"But why not? Just one little needle, you'd hardly feel it."

"But I dod't like deedles!" she cried, bursting into tears. "Why dod't
you leave be alode? Go take your dasty old deedles ad stick theb id
people that wadt theb."

"Aw, Ellie--"

"I dod't care, _I dod't like deedles_!" she wailed, burying her face in
his shirt.

He held her close, making comforting little noises. It was no use, he
reflected sadly. Science just wasn't Ellie's long suit; she didn't know
a cold vaccine from a case of smallpox, and no appeal to logic or common
sense could surmount her irrational fear of hypodermics. "All right,
nobody's going to make you do anything you don't want to," he said.

"Ad eddyway, thik of the poor tissue badufacturers," she sniffled,
wiping her nose with a pink facial tissue. "All their little childred
starvig to death."

"Say, you _have_ got a cold," said Phillip, sniffing. "You've got on
enough perfume to fell an ox." He wiped away tears and grinned at her.
"Come on now, fix your face. Dinner at the Driftwood? I hear they have
marvelous lamb chops."

It was a mellow evening. The lamb chops were delectable--the tastiest
lamb chops he had ever eaten, he thought, even being blessed with as
good a cook as Ellie for a spouse. Ellie dripped and blew continuously,
but refused to go home unt