There ought to be a law, all right. The heroine in the first story Mary-Jean had read went off to Caracas, Venezuela, in search of petroleum with her husband. The heroine of the second story was an Army nurse stationed in divided, exotic, intrigue-filled Berlin. The heroine of the third, Mary-Jean thought dreamily, had spent a memorable summer with the son of a fabulously wealthy Oriental potentate in Shalimar, Kashmir.
Mary-Jean went upstairs to take her daily shower, still thinking of Shalimar, Kashmir. The Vale of a Thousand Delights, it was called. Do I have one? thought Mary-Jean. Just one genuine delight like the girls in those stories? Oh, there's Tom: Tom's good natured, but an accountant. An accountant. She shuddered slightly as she got ready for her shower. And Tommy, Jr., aged seven. But Tommy, Jr., showed every sign of being a normal, everyday boy who would grow up into a normal, workaday man like his father.
Sighing again, Mary-Jean stripped before her mirror for the daily scrutiny preparatory to showering. I'm only twenty-eight, she thought. No sags in the wrong places. No excess fat and no gawky bones sticking out, either. But let's face it, Mary-Jean, you're no raving beauty. You're just a normal, plain, supposedly well-adjusted housewife who—
Who has been waiting every minute of every day of her life, Mary-Jean thought with unexpected bitterness, for something thrilling to happen to her. Only, it never did. There was the dulling, oddly frightening hand of routine, and nothing else. No Vale of a Thousand Delights, Mary-Jean thought, and laughed at her own unexpected, childish pipe-dreams.
She had already stepped into the glass-enclosed shower stall when the door chimes rang pleasantly through the house. Momentarily she debated answering or pretending she wasn't home. But even a door-to-door vacuum cleaner salesman would break the routine with his chatter, she decided, and slipped into a dressing gown on her way downstairs.
Tom, who had a do-it-yourself workshop in the basement, had installed an ingenious one-way looking slot in the front door sidelight, and Mary-Jean used this now to see who her visitor was. She frowned, almost regretting her impulse to answer the door.
A little old man stood outside, holding an enormous suitcase. He was obviously a peddler. He was a rotund little man with a cheerful-enough face, red-cheeked, eyes sparkling and an incongruous little rosebud pout of a mouth under a long—make that, Mary-Jean observed, an incredibly long nose. He wore nondescript clothing—except for the hat. The hat was one of those sporty Tyrolean things which went so well with the tweeds and the college set. Yet oddly, the natty headpiece did not seem out of place on the rotund little man's head.
Suddenly the little old man did a curious thing. He smiled at Mary-Jean. Smiled at her through the one-way glass. It could not be, she told herself, a coincidence. He was smiling right at her, smiling eye-to-eye, as it were, although he could not possibly see through the one-way glass. He removed the Tyrolean hat from a round bald dome of a head and executed a little bow. Mary-Jean fought down a crazy impulse to curtsey and instead opened the door with a quick, almost an angry motion. Her heart was pounding.
"You called, madam?" the little old man demanded in a chirp of a voice. Chirp was the only word Mary-Jean could think of. The little old man sounded just like a bird.