blades, but the brisk
little man pushed heartily and the mechanism revolved with a barely
audible clicking. It did not balk, complain or hesitate. Cleanly severed
ends of grass whirled into the air and floated down on the neat smooth
swath left behind. Everyone smiled relievedly at the jimdandy's triumph
and my sigh was loudest and most heartfelt. I edged away as
unobtrusively as I could.

_4._ I have no sympathy with weaklings who complain of the cards being
stacked, but it did seem as though fate were dealing unkindly with me.
Here was a good proposition, coming just at the time I needed it most
and it was turning bad rapidly. Walking the short distance to Miss
Francis' I was unable to settle my mind, to strike a mental
balancesheet. There was money; there had to be money--lots and lots of
it--in the Metamorphizer, but it was possible there was trouble--lots
and lots of it--also. The thing was, well, dangerous. What was the use
of expending ability in selling something which could have kickbacks
acting as deterrents to future sales? Of course a man had to take
risks....

The door, after a properly prudent hesitation, clicked brokenly. Miss
Francis looked as though she'd added insomnia to her other abstentions,
otherwise she had not changed, even to her skirt and the smudge on her
left nostril. "If youve come about the icebox youre a week late. I fixed
it myself," she greeted me gruffly.

"Weener," I reminded her, "Albert Weener--remember? I'm selling--that
is, I'm going to sell the product you invented to make plants eat
anything."

"Oh. Weener--yes." She produced the toothpick and scratched her chin
with it. "About the Metamorphizer." She paused and rubbed her elbow. "A
mistake, I'm afraid. An error."

Aha, I thought, a new deal. Someone's offered to back her. Steal her
brainchild, negate all my efforts to make her independent and cheat me
of the reward of my spadework. You wouldnt think of her as a frail
credulous woman, easily taken in by the first smooth talker, but a woman
is a woman afterall.

"Look, Miss Francis," I argued, "youve got a big thing here, a great
thing. The possibilities are practically unlimited. Of course youll have
to have a manager to put it across--an executive, a man with business
experience--someone who can tap the great reservoir of buying power by
the conviction of a new need. Organize a sales campaign; rationalize
production. Put the whole thing on a commercial basis. For all t