Sam's heart was beating swiftly as he sat down. Conditioned responses, he thought a little wildly. He'd started it off last night by defying Dorothy—and now, bit by bit, it was becoming easier. All he'd have to do was keep it up, see that he didn't lapse.
He sipped the coffee slowly, as if tasting his recent triumph in the black liquid.
"You'd better hurry," Dorothy said, looking at him a little uneasily.
Sam glanced at the wall clock and began gulping the hot liquid. Ten of eight! He'd have to hurry. He paused suddenly, the cup in mid-air, and wondered. Hurry to what? To those two wires and the tester and the endless stream of untested engines flowing toward him?
With an infinite firmness, Sam Meecham placed his cup on the saucer. "I'm not going in," he said.
Dorothy looked at him as though he were crazy. "What do you mean, you're not going in?" she demanded. "Just because you've got some mulish notion in your head, do you think we have to starve? You're going in and liking it."
"The engine I bought is coming today," he said in a quiet voice. "I want to install it." In Sam Meecham's eyes there was a deadly fire that even his wife had not seen before. She gulped and backed away a little.
"But—"
"Call up the foreman," Sam said. "Tell him I'm sick. No, wait." He paused, smiling coldly. That would leave him an out; he could always go back to the job if he changed his mind. He said slowly, "Tell him I've quit."
"Sam!"