"Faith, yerself," the voice said. "And who's callin'?"
"It's me," Pat said. "Pat O'Brien."
"Is it now? That movie actin' fella?"
Pat flushed modestly. "Oh, no, sir," he said. "Just plain Pat O'Brien, down at the gas station."
"Oh," the voice said with a new note of chattiness. "There's a good lad. And how's yer dear ma, Pat?"
"The picture of health," Pat said, "even if she is down with the gout, poor soul." Then suddenly he turned away from the telephone, his eyes drawn to the struggle by the pumps. Things seemed to have gotten quite far out of hand. The girl had taken the hose loose from one of the pumps and was swinging it determinedly at the head of the small man in the derby. It did not help matters that she had managed to trip the mechanism and was hurling gasoline in all direction. Worse than that, however, was the behavior of the water hose; all by itself it had risen in the air, like a huge, spiteful snake, and had begun adding water to the deluge.
"Faith," Pat commented darkly. "It's a terrible thing."
"Do stop repeatin' yerself like that," the voice on the telephone answered. "It makes you sound like a proper ninny, it does. What is it that's a terrible thing? Is it in a professional capacity that you're callin' me?"
"And so it is," Pat affirmed. "It's a bit of advice I crave. The company that owns this station says that the customer is always right, but I'm wonderin' if it's still true when the world's gone mad?"
"And in what way has the world gone mad, Pat?"