The Freelancer by Robert Zacks (good ebook reader .TXT) 📕

Marriage Relations glanced at a dial nearby. "Of course you are. Suffering is the ideal joy for a Masochist. Just think what a lovely two months of missing her you'll have."

"All right, so it's a rule that I have to send her on a vacation and can't join her," Jeb complained savagely, "but, damn it, she doesn't have to enjoy it!"

"Well," said the man, looking back to Jeb, "there's the answer. Your Masochism index has gone down any number of points. You're angry!"

Jeb thought it over. "You bet I am! But what do I do about it?"

"Why," said the man from Marriage Relations, "the same thing husbands have been doing ever since they started working to send their wives away on vacations. When the cat's away, you know—" He stopped in alarm.

Jeb grinned. "I told you the Monitex is off. But thanks for the trite truism. She thinks she's the only one who'll have a vacation, eh? I'll show her!"

"Service is our motto. And it really is," the man said pugnaciously. "We own the Copyright."

The face flickered off the screen and Jeb began poking around in innocent-looking secret places for a little black book he hadn't thought of using in years.

He was dismayed to find himself singing "My wife's gone to the country, hooray, hooray," until he remembered that he actually had shut off the Monitex.

End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of The Freelancer, by Robert Zacks