November 29, 2013.

Black Friday Bargains Lure Shoppers to Stores, Online

A thrush had alighted on a bough not five metres away, almost at the level of their faces. Perhaps it had not seen them. It was in the sun, they in the shade. It spread out its wings, fitted them carefully into place again, ducked its head for a moment, as though making a sort of obeisance to the sun, and then began to pour forth a torrent of song. In the afternoon hush the volume of sound was startling. Winston and Julia clung together, fascinated. The music went on and on, minute after minute, with astonishing variations, never once repeating itself, almost as though the bird were deliberately showing off its virtuosity. Sometimes it stopped for a few seconds, spread out and resettled its wings, then swelled its speckled breast and again burst into song. Winston watched it with a sort of vague reverence. For whom, for what, was that bird singing? No mate, no rival was watching it. What made it sit at the edge of the lonely wood and pour its music into nothingness? He wondered whether after all there was a microphone hidden somewhere near. He and Julia had spoken only in low whispers, and it would not pick up what they had said, but it would pick up the thrush. Perhaps at the other end of the instrument some small, beetle-like man was listening intently----listening to that. But by degrees the flood of music drove all speculations out of his mind. It was as though it were a kind of liquid stuff that poured all over him and got mixed up with the sunlight that filtered through the leaves. He stopped thinking and merely felt. The girl's waist in the bend of his arm was soft and warm. He pulled her round so that they were breast to breast; her body seemed to melt into his. Wherever his hands moved it was all as yielding as water. Their mouths clung together; it was quite different from the hard kisses they had exchanged earlier. When they moved their faces apart again both of them sighed deeply. The bird took fright and fled with a clatter of wings.

Wal-Mart Stores Inc. WMT +0.31%  and Target Corp. TGT +0.85%  reported strong Thanksgiving Day traffic in stores and online, adding that shoppers were focused on big-ticket electronic products.

Winston put his lips against her ear. "Now," he whispered.

The retailers didn't provide specific sales figures but tried to suggest that their decisions to open earlier on the holiday were successful. Wal-Mart and Target were among a number of retailers that opened on Thanksgiving Day, at 6 p.m. and 8 p.m., respectively, in an effort to boost struggling sales in a tight economy and keep up with online retailers.

"Not here," she whispered back. "Come back to the hide-out. It's safer."

Wal-Mart said it recorded more than 10 million register transactions between 6 p.m. and 10 p.m. Thursday in its stores and nearly 400 million page views that day on walmart.com. Target said sales were among the highest it had seen in a single day online and it booked twice as many orders on its website as last year in the early hours when door-busters became available.