“Twenty it is, Harry. I’ll sell you mine this time tomorrow for twenty bucks.”
Harry shook his head. “I’ll trade you mine for yours, plus twenty.” Then his eyes twinkled. “And speaking of money, didn’t you come down here to buy something?”
Mike the Angel laughed. “You’re not going to like it. I came down to get a dozen plastic-core resistors.”
“What size?”
Mike told him, and Old Harry went over to the proper bin, pulled them out, all properly boxed, and handed them to him.
“That’ll be four dollars,” he said.
Mike the Angel paid up with a smile. “You don’t happen to have a hundred-thousand-unit microcryotron stack, do you?”
“Ain’t s’posed to,” said Harry MacDougal. “If I did, I wouldn’t sell it to you. But, as a matter of cold fact, I do happen to have one. Use it for a paperweight. I’ll give it to you for nothing, because it don’t work, anyhow.”
“Maybe I can fix it,” said Mike the Angel, “as long as you’re giving it to me. How come it doesn’t work?”
“Just a second, laddie,” said Harry. He scuttled to the rear of the shop and came back with a ready-wrapped package measuring five by five by four. He handed it to Mike the Angel and said: “It’s a present. Thanks for helping me out of a tight spot.”