"No, thanks, Doug—gotta see a man. Now take it easy—let the state of the nation go bury its head for tonight and you have some fun blowing fuses!"
"Yeah, yeah! O.K. and thanks."
The blue sedan sloshed its way back to the highway, and Doug went into the house.
Douglas Blair kissed his wife and, as he did every time he kissed her, wondered how he'd been so lucky. He preferred to think as seldom as memory would permit of how close he'd come on a couple of occasions to marrying a country club, a bridge deck, a women's society, an Emily Post book. And when Dot had given him Terry and Mike, she'd topped off the miracle of herself with the added one of two healthy young minds that had already learned to say "prove it!" Some of the tiredness left him, a lot of the aching discouragement was brushed away.
"Tired, Doug?"
"I was."
There was a sudden thundering which grew quickly into the crashing noises often made by wild elephants getting exercise in a native village.
"The patter of little feet," Dorothy said.
"Oh. For a minute I thought it was termites. Hi, fellas! What kind of trouble did we almost keep out of today?"