"We allow our customers the right to accept our product on a twenty-four-hour trial basis. I shall return here in precisely twenty-four hours. I mean precisely; you see, my schedule is a busy one. If at that time you wish to become your old self again, you have merely to tell me. On the other hand, if you are satisfied with the change, with your new personality, all you have to do is not keep the appointment with me and the change will then be a permanent one. You understand?"
And, before Mary-Jean could answer, the old peddler had disappeared. Not walked up the flagstone walk and to the sidewalk. Disappeared. In the blinking of an eye. Simply vanished.
Mary-Jean shuddered with a sudden chill although it was early summer.
Then she ran upstairs clutching her jar of happiness balm.
She removed her robe and went to the mirror again, looking at herself critically. A nice little figure, she thought, thinking the word nice so it meant average and decent and ordinary, but nothing special. A moderately pleasing face, if she spent sufficient time making up. But she just wasn't the sort of person who would attract adventure. She never had been and never would be and her life would go right on, mundanely and prosaically, unless....
Wildly before she could stop the sudden impulse, she unscrewed the cover of the jar of happiness balm, took a big gob of the sticky white stuff with the vaguely exotic perfumy smell on each hand and began to rub it all over herself.
When she finished the brief operation, when the jar was completely empty, she felt a moment of shame. You're a fool, Mary-Jean, she thought. There's not a thing going to happen, not one solitary thing because of your happiness balm. Attract adventure, my foot! But strangely, the balm stiffened on her bare skin, began to tingle. She had never felt anything quite like it and soon the tingling became so strong that it began to alarm her. She ran into the shower and turned the needle-spray on full power. And, she told herself, showering was part of the happiness balm treatment. Oh, great. Just great, Mary-Jean. You're a baby. A big, twenty-eight-year-old pipe-dreaming baby. Because you really did fall for it, all right. If that practical joker of a peddler could see you now, he'd laugh his bald little head off. And this, she continued the silent monologue as she scrubbed herself with a cloth and soap, this is one harmless little escapade you'll never mention to Tom. Tom has no mercy that way. He'd laugh so hard he'd hardly be able to eat his supper.
His supper! Mary-Jean jolted herself with the sudden thought. She had forgotten all about the cooking stew. Probably, it needed more water. Probably, it was already burning, already ruined....