"I—well—" Arch looked guiltily at the oil-stained floor. "I'm afraid—your business—"
"Oh, don't worry about me. I've got more business than I can handle. Everybody in town seems to want his car converted over to your type of engine. That young Bob is turning out the stuff like a printing press gone berserk."
Arch couldn't quite meet his eyes. "But—aren't your gasoline sales dropping?"
"To be sure. But cars still need lubrication and—Look, you know the old watermill down by Ronson's farm? I'm buying that, putting in a generator and a high-voltage transformer and rectifier. I'll be selling packaged power. A lot easier than running a gas pump, at my age."
"Won't the power company be competing?"
"Eventually. Right now, they're still waiting for orders from higher up, I guess. Some people can charge their capacitors right at home, but most would rather not buy the special equipment. They'll come to me, and by the time the power outfit gets wise to itself, I'll 've come in on the ground floor."
"Thanks," said Arch, a little shakily. "It makes me feel a lot better."
If only everybody had that Yankee adaptability, he thought as he walked home. But he saw now, as he wished he had seen earlier, that society had gone too far. With rare exceptions, progress was no longer a matter of individual re-adjustments. It was a huge and clumsy economic system which had to make the transformation... a jerry-built system whose workings no one understood, even today.
He wanted to call up Gilmer and make what terms he could, but it was too late. The snowball was rolling.
He sighed his way into an armchair and picked up the paper.