"Why, Ed!" exclaimed the wife, "you didn't tell me the factory was working nights."
Ed, like most husbands, was in the habit of telling friend wife 'most everything. For once he was at a loss. Sure enough, the lights were going full tilt on all floors. Hitting on all six, you might say.
Then he laughed. It all came to him—"It's just the scrubwomen at work."
One feature picture, one newsreel and one animated cartoon later, they walked past the plant again.
"Look, the factory's still lit up," remarked the wife who turned off the living room lights religiously when she went out to get supper ready.
This time Ed didn't laugh.
In days like these one doesn't. Not, at any rate, at the thought of mounting electricity bills.
The very next evening he was on the job. Time somebody found out what was what. In came the cleaners. They switched on the office lights—all of them—and two of the crew went to work. A couple of others went up to the second floor, switched on all the lights and pitched in with a vim. And so ad infinitum—or at least to the sixth story.
And all the while the electric meter went round and round!