Chapter: CHAPTER IV


I

"THE Clarks have invited some folks to their house to meet us, tonight,"
said Kennicott, as he unpacked his suit-case.

"Oh, that is nice of them!"

"You bet. I told you you'd like 'em. Squarest people on earth. Uh,
Carrie----Would you mind if I sneaked down to the office for an hour,
just to see how things are?"

"Why, no. Of course not. I know you're keen to get back to work."

"Sure you don't mind?"

"Not a bit. Out of my way. Let me unpack."

But the advocate of freedom in marriage was as much disappointed as
a drooping bride at the alacrity with which he took that freedom and
escaped to the world of men's affairs. She gazed about their bedroom,
and its full dismalness crawled over her: the awkward knuckly L-shape
of it; the black walnut bed with apples and spotty pears carved on the
headboard; the imitation maple bureau, with pink-daubed scent-bottles
and a petticoated pin-cushion on a marble slab uncomfortably like a
gravestone; the plain pine washstand and the garlanded water-pitcher and
bowl. The scent was of horsehair and plush and Florida Water.

"How could people ever live with things like this?" she shuddered. She
saw the furniture as a circle of elderly judges, condemning her to death
by smothering. The tottering brocade chair squeaked, "Choke her--choke
her--smother her." The old linen smelled of the tomb. She was alone in
this house, this strange still house, among the shadows of dead thoughts
and haunting repressions. "I hate it! I hate it!" she panted. "Why did I
ever----"

She remembered that Kennicott's mother had brought these family
relics from the old home in Lac-qui-Meurt. "Stop it! They're perfectly
comfortable things. They're--comfortable. Besides----Oh, they're
horrible! We'll change them, right away."

Then, "But of course he HAS to see how things are at the office----"

She made a pretense of busying herself with unpacking. The chintz-lined,
silver-fitted bag which had seemed so desirable a luxury in St. Paul was
an extravagant vanity here. The daring black chemise of frail chiffon
and lace was a hussy at which the deep-bosomed bed stiffened in disgust,
and she hurled it into a bureau drawer, hid it beneath a sensible linen
blouse.

She gave up unpacking. She went to the window, with a purely literary
thought of village charm--hollyhocks and lanes and apple-cheeked
cottagers. What she saw was the side of the Seventh-Day Adventist
Church--a plain clapboard wall of a sour liver color; the ash-pile
back of the church; an unpainted stable; and an alley in which a Ford
delivery-wagon had been stranded. This was the terraced garden below her
boudoir; this was to be her scenery for----

"I mustn't! I mustn't! I'm nervous this afternoon. Am I sick? . . . Good
Lord, I hope it isn't that! Not now! How people lie! How these stories
lie! They say the bride is always so blushing and proud and happy when
she finds that out, but--I'd hate it! I'd be scared to death! Some
day but----Please, dear nebulous Lord, not now! Bearded sniffy old
men sitting and demanding that we bear children. If THEY had to bear
them----! I wish they did have to! Not now! Not till I've got hold of
this job of liking the ash-pile out there! . . . I must shut up. I'm
mildly insane. I'm going out for a walk. I'll see the town by myself. My
first view of the empire I'm going to conquer!"

She fled from the house.

She stared with seriousness at every concrete crossing, every
hitching-post, every rake for leaves; and to each house she devoted all
her speculation. What would they come to mean? How would they look six
months from now? In which of them would she be dining? Which of these
people whom she passed, now mere arrangements of hair and clothes, would
turn into intimates, loved or dreaded, different from all the other
people in the world?

As she came into the small business-section she inspected a broad-beamed
grocer in an alpaca coat who was bending over the apples and celery on a
slanted platform in front of his store. Would she ever talk to him? What
would he say if she stopped and stated, "I am Mrs. Dr. Kennicott. Some
day I hope to confide that a heap of extremely dubious pumpkins as a
window-display doesn't exhilarate me much."

(The grocer was Mr. Frederick F. Ludelmeyer, whose market is at the
corner of Main Street and Lincoln Avenue. In supposing that only she was
observant Carol was ignorant, misled by the indifference of cities. She
fancied that she was slipping through the streets invisible; but when
she had passed, Mr. Ludelmeyer puffed into the store and coughed at his
clerk, "I seen a young woman, she come along the side street. I bet she
iss Doc Kennicott's new bride, good-looker, nice legs, but she wore a
hell of a plain suit, no style, I wonder will she pay cash, I bet she
goes to Howland & Gould's more as she does here, what you done with the
poster for Fluffed Oats?")



II


When Carol had walked for thirty-two minutes she had completely covered
the town, east and west, north and south; and she stood at the corner of
Main Street and Washington Avenue and despaired.

Main Street with its two-story brick shops, its story-and-a-half wooden
residences, its muddy expanse from concrete walk to walk, its huddle
of Fords and lumber-wagons, was too small to absorb her. The broad,
straight, unenticing gashes of the streets let in the grasping prairie
on every side. She realized the vastness and the emptiness of the land.
The skeleton iron windmill on the farm a few blocks away, at the north
end of Main Street, was like the ribs of a dead cow. She thought of the
coming of the Northern winter, when the unprotected houses would crouch
together in terror of storms galloping out of that wild waste. They
were so small and weak, the little brown houses. They were shelters for
sparrows, not homes for warm laughing people.

She told herself that down the street the leaves were a splendor. The
maples were orange; the oaks a solid tint of raspberry. And the lawns
had been nursed with love. But the thought would not hold. At best the
trees resembled a thinned woodlot. There was no park to rest the eyes.
And since not Gopher Prairie but Wakamin was the county-seat, there was
no court-house with its grounds.

She glanced through the fly-specked windows of the most pretentious
building in sight, the one place which welcomed strangers and
determined their opinion of the charm and luxury of Gopher Prairie--the
Minniemashie House. It was a tall lean shabby structure, three stories
of yellow-streaked wood, the corners covered with sanded pine slabs
purporting to symbolize stone. In the hotel office she could see a
stretch of bare unclean floor, a line of rickety chairs with brass
cuspidors between, a writing-desk with advertisements in mother-of-pearl
letters upon the glass-covered back. The dining-room beyond was a jungle
of stained table-cloths and catsup bottles.

She looked no more at the Minniemashie House.

A man in cuffless shirt-sleeves with pink arm-garters, wearing a linen
collar but no tie, yawned his way from Dyer's Drug Store across to the
hotel. He leaned against the wall, scratched a while, sighed, and in a
bored way gossiped with a man tilted back in a chair. A lumber-wagon,
its long green box filled with large spools of barbed-wire fencing,
creaked down the block. A Ford, in reverse, sounded as though it
were shaking to pieces, then recovered and rattled away. In the Greek
candy-store was the whine of a peanut-roaster, and the oily smell of
nuts.

There was no other sound nor sign of life.

She wanted to run, fleeing from the encroaching prairie, demanding the
security of a great city. Her dreams of creating a beautiful town were
ludicrous. Oozing out from every drab wall, she felt a forbidding spirit
which she could never conquer.

She trailed down the street on one side, back on the other, glancing
into the cross streets. It was a private Seeing Main Street tour. She
was within ten minutes beholding not only the heart of a place called
Gopher Prairie, but ten thousand towns from Albany to San Diego:

Dyer's Drug Store, a corner building of regular and unreal blocks of
artificial stone. Inside the store, a greasy marble soda-fountain with
an electric lamp of red and green and curdled-yellow mosaic
shade. Pawed-over heaps of tooth-brushes and combs and packages of
shaving-soap. Shelves of soap-cartons, teething-rings, garden-seeds,
and patent medicines in yellow "packages-nostrums" for consumption, for
"women's diseases"--notorious mixtures of opium and alcohol, in
the very shop to which her husband sent patients for the filling of
prescriptions.

From a second-story window the sign "W. P. Kennicott, Phys. & Surgeon,"
gilt on black sand.

A small wooden motion-picture theater called "The Rosebud Movie Palace."
Lithographs announcing a film called "Fatty in Love."

Howland & Gould's Grocery. In the display window, black, overripe
bananas and lettuce on which a cat was sleeping. Shelves lined with red
crepe paper which was now faded and torn and concentrically spotted.
Flat against the wall of the second story the signs of lodges--the
Knights of Pythias, the Maccabees, the Woodmen, the Masons.

Dahl & Oleson's Meat Market--a reek of blood.

A jewelry shop with tinny-looking wrist-watches for women. In front of
it, at the curb, a huge wooden clock which did not go.

A fly-buzzing saloon with a brilliant gold and enamel whisky sign across
the front. Other saloons down the block. From them a stink of stale
beer, and thick voices bellowing pidgin German or trolling out dirty
songs--vice gone feeble and unenterprising and dull--the delicacy of a
mining-camp minus its vigor. In front of the saloons, farmwives sitting
on the seats of wagons, waiting for their husbands to become drunk and
ready to start home.

A tobacco shop called "The Smoke House," filled with young men shaking
dice for cigarettes. Racks of magazines, and pictures of coy fat
prostitutes in striped bathing-suits.

A clothing store with a display of "ox-blood-shade Oxfords with bull-dog
toes." Suits which looked worn and glossless while they were still new,
flabbily draped on dummies like corpses with painted cheeks.

The Bon Ton Store--Haydock & Simons'--the largest shop in town. The
first-story front of clear glass, the plates cleverly bound at the edges
with brass. The second story of pleasant tapestry brick. One window of
excellent clothes for men, interspersed with collars of floral pique
which showed mauve daisies on a saffron ground. Newness and an obvious
notion of neatness and service. Haydock & Simons. Haydock. She had met a
Haydock at the station; Harry Haydock; an active person of thirty-five.
He seemed great to her, now, and very like a saint. His shop was clean!

Axel Egge's General Store, frequented by Scandinavian farmers. In the
shallow dark window-space heaps of sleazy sateens, badly woven galateas,
canvas shoes designed for women with bulging ankles, steel and red glass
buttons upon cards with broken edges, a cottony blanket, a granite-ware
frying-pan reposing on a sun-faded crepe blouse.

Sam Clark's Hardware Store. An air of frankly metallic enterprise. Guns
and churns and barrels of nails and beautiful shiny butcher knives.

Chester Dashaway's House Furnishing Emporium. A vista of heavy oak
rockers with leather seats, asleep in a dismal row.

Billy's Lunch. Thick handleless cups on the wet oilcloth-covered
counter. An odor of onions and the smoke of hot lard. In the doorway a
young man audibly sucking a toothpick.

The warehouse of the buyer of cream and potatoes. The sour smell of a
dairy.

The Ford Garage and the Buick Garage, competent one-story brick
and cement buildings opposite each other. Old and new cars on
grease-blackened concrete floors. Tire advertisements. The roaring of
a tested motor; a racket which beat at the nerves. Surly young men in
khaki union-overalls. The most energetic and vital places in town.

A large warehouse for agricultural implements. An impressive barricade
of green and gold wheels, of shafts and sulky seats, belonging
to machinery of which Carol knew nothing--potato-planters,
manure-spreaders, silage-cutters, disk-harrows, breaking-plows.

A feed store, its windows opaque with the dust of bran, a patent
medicine advertisement painted on its roof.

Ye Art Shoppe, Prop. Mrs. Mary Ellen Wilks, Christian Science Library
open daily free. A touching fumble at beauty. A one-room shanty of
boards recently covered with rough stucco. A show-window delicately rich
in error: vases starting out to imitate tree-trunks but running off
into blobs of gilt--an aluminum ash-tray labeled "Greetings from
Gopher Prairie"--a Christian Science magazine--a stamped sofa-cushion
portraying a large ribbon tied to a small poppy, the correct skeins of
embroidery-silk lying on the pillow. Inside the shop, a glimpse of bad
carbon prints of bad and famous pictures, shelves of phonograph records
and camera films, wooden toys, and in the midst an anxious small woman
sitting in a padded rocking chair.

A barber shop and pool room. A man in shirt sleeves, presumably Del
Snafflin the proprietor, shaving a man who had a large Adam's apple.

Nat Hicks's Tailor Shop, on a side street off Main. A one-story
building. A fashion-plate showing human pitchforks in garments which
looked as hard as steel plate.

On another side street a raw red-brick Catholic Church with a varnished
yellow door.

The post-office--merely a partition of glass and brass shutting off
the rear of a mildewed room which must once have been a shop. A tilted
writing-shelf against a wall rubbed black and scattered with official
notices and army recruiting-posters.

The damp, yellow-brick schoolbuilding in its cindery grounds.

The State Bank, stucco masking wood.

The Farmers' National Bank. An Ionic temple of marble. Pure, exquisite,
solitary. A brass plate with "Ezra Stowbody, Pres't."

A score of similar shops and establishments.

Behind them and mixed with them, the houses, meek cottages or large,
comfortable, soundly uninteresting symbols of prosperity.

In all the town not one building save the Ionic bank which gave pleasure
to Carol's eyes; not a dozen buildings which suggested that, in the
fifty years of Gopher Prairie's existence, the citizens had realized
that it was either desirable or possible to make this, their common
home, amusing or attractive.

It was not only the unsparing unapologetic ugliness and the rigid
straightness which overwhelmed her. It was the planlessness, the flimsy
temporariness of the buildings, their faded unpleasant colors. The
street was cluttered with electric-light poles, telephone poles,
gasoline pumps for motor cars, boxes of goods. Each man had built
with the most valiant disregard of all the others. Between a large
new "block" of two-story brick shops on one side, and the fire-brick
Overland garage on the other side, was a one-story cottage turned into
a millinery shop. The white temple of the Farmers' Bank was elbowed back
by a grocery of glaring yellow brick. One store-building had a patchy
galvanized iron cornice; the building beside it was crowned with
battlements and pyramids of brick capped with blocks of red sandstone.

She escaped from Main Street, fled home.

She wouldn't have cared, she insisted, if the people had been comely.
She had noted a young man loafing before a shop, one unwashed hand
holding the cord of an awning; a middle-aged man who had a way of
staring at women as though he had been married too long and too
prosaically; an old farmer, solid, wholesome, but not clean--his face
like a potato fresh from the earth. None of them had shaved for three
days.

"If they can't build shrines, out here on the prairie, surely there's
nothing to prevent their buying safety-razors!" she raged.

She fought herself: "I must be wrong. People do live here. It CAN'T be
as ugly as--as I know it is! I must be wrong. But I can't do it. I can't
go through with it."

She came home too seriously worried for hysteria; and when she found
Kennicott waiting for her, and exulting, "Have a walk? Well, like
the town? Great lawns and trees, eh?" she was able to say, with a
self-protective maturity new to her, "It's very interesting."



III


The train which brought Carol to Gopher Prairie also brought Miss Bea
Sorenson.

Miss Bea was a stalwart, corn-colored, laughing young woman, and she was
bored by farm-work. She desired the excitements of city-life, and the
way to enjoy city-life was, she had decided, to "go get a yob as hired
girl in Gopher Prairie." She contentedly lugged her pasteboard telescope
from the station to her cousin, Tina Malmquist, maid of all work in the
residence of Mrs. Luke Dawson.

"Vell, so you come to town," said Tina.

"Ya. Ay get a yob," said Bea.

"Vell. . . . You got a fella now?"

"Ya. Yim Yacobson."

"Vell. I'm glat to see you. How much you vant a veek?"

"Sex dollar."

"There ain't nobody pay dat. Vait! Dr. Kennicott, I t'ink he marry a
girl from de Cities. Maybe she pay dat. Vell. You go take a valk."

"Ya," said Bea.

So it chanced that Carol Kennicott and Bea Sorenson were viewing Main
Street at the same time.

Bea had never before been in a town larger than Scandia Crossing, which
has sixty-seven inhabitants.

As she marched up the street she was meditating that it didn't hardly
seem like it was possible there could be so many folks all in one place
at the same time. My! It would take years to get acquainted with them
all. And swell people, too! A fine big gentleman in a new pink shirt
with a diamond, and not no washed-out blue denim working-shirt. A lovely
lady in a longery dress (but it must be an awful hard dress to wash).
And the stores!

Not just three of them, like there were at Scandia Crossing, but more
than four whole blocks!

The Bon Ton Store--big as four barns--my! it would simply scare a person
to go in there, with seven or eight clerks all looking at you. And the
men's suits, on figures just like human. And Axel Egge's, like home,
lots of Swedes and Norskes in there, and a card of dandy buttons, like
rubies.

A drug store with a soda fountain that was just huge, awful long, and
all lovely marble; and on it there was a great big lamp with the biggest
shade you ever saw--all different kinds colored glass stuck together;
and the soda spouts, they were silver, and they came right out of the
bottom of the lamp-stand! Behind the fountain there were glass shelves,
and bottles of new kinds of soft drinks, that nobody ever heard of.
Suppose a fella took you THERE!

A hotel, awful high, higher than Oscar Tollefson's new red barn; three
stories, one right on top of another; you had to stick your head back
to look clear up to the top. There was a swell traveling man in
there--probably been to Chicago, lots of times.

Oh, the dandiest people to know here! There was a lady going by, you
wouldn't hardly say she was any older than Bea herself; she wore a dandy
new gray suit and black pumps. She almost looked like she was looking
over the town, too. But you couldn't tell what she thought. Bea would
like to be that way--kind of quiet, so nobody would get fresh. Kind
of--oh, elegant.

A Lutheran Church. Here in the city there'd be lovely sermons, and
church twice on Sunday, EVERY Sunday!

And a movie show!

A regular theater, just for movies. With the sign "Change of bill every
evening." Pictures every evening!

There were movies in Scandia Crossing, but only once every two weeks,
and it took the Sorensons an hour to drive in--papa was such a tightwad
he wouldn't get a Ford. But here she could put on her hat any evening,
and in three minutes' walk be to the movies, and see lovely fellows in
dress-suits and Bill Hart and everything!

How could they have so many stores? Why! There was one just for tobacco
alone, and one (a lovely one--the Art Shoppy it was) for pictures and
vases and stuff, with oh, the dandiest vase made so it looked just like
a tree trunk!

Bea stood on the corner of Main Street and Washington Avenue. The roar
of the city began to frighten her. There were five automobiles on the
street all at the same time--and one of 'em was a great big car that
must of cost two thousand dollars--and the 'bus was starting for a train
with five elegant-dressed fellows, and a man was pasting up red bills
with lovely pictures of washing-machines on them, and the jeweler was
laying out bracelets and wrist-watches and EVERYTHING on real velvet.

What did she care if she got six dollars a week? Or two! It was worth
while working for nothing, to be allowed to stay here. And think how it
would be in the evening, all lighted up--and not with no lamps, but with
electrics! And maybe a gentleman friend taking you to the movies and
buying you a strawberry ice cream soda!

Bea trudged back.

"Vell? You lak it?" said Tina.

"Ya. Ay lak it. Ay t'ink maybe Ay stay here," said Bea.



IV


The recently built house of Sam Clark, in which was given the party to
welcome Carol, was one of the largest in Gopher Prairie. It had a clean
sweep of clapboards, a solid squareness, a small tower, and a large
screened porch. Inside, it was as shiny, as hard, and as cheerful as a
new oak upright piano.

Carol looked imploringly at Sam Clark as he rolled to the door and
shouted, "Welcome, little lady! The keys of the city are yourn!"

Beyond him, in the hallway and the living-room, sitting in a vast prim
circle as though they were attending a funeral, she saw the guests. They
were WAITING so! They were waiting for her! The determination to be all
one pretty flowerlet of appreciation leaked away. She begged of Sam,
"I don't dare face them! They expect so much. They'll swallow me in one
mouthful--glump!--like that!"

"Why, sister, they're going to love you--same as I would if I didn't
think the doc here would beat me up!"

"B-but----I don't dare! Faces to the right of me, faces in front of me,
volley and wonder!"

She sounded hysterical to herself; she fancied that to Sam Clark she
sounded insane. But he chuckled, "Now you just cuddle under Sam's wing,
and if anybody rubbers at you too long, I'll shoo 'em off. Here we go!
Watch my smoke--Sam'l, the ladies' delight and the bridegrooms' terror!"

His arm about her, he led her in and bawled, "Ladies and worser halves,
the bride! We won't introduce her round yet, because she'll never get
your bum names straight anyway. Now bust up this star-chamber!"

They tittered politely, but they did not move from the social security
of their circle, and they did not cease staring.

Carol had given creative energy to dressing for the event. Her hair was
demure, low on her forehead with a parting and a coiled braid. Now she
wished that she had piled it high. Her frock was an ingenue slip
of lawn, with a wide gold sash and a low square neck, which gave a
suggestion of throat and molded shoulders. But as they looked her over
she was certain that it was all wrong. She wished alternately that she
had worn a spinsterish high-necked dress, and that she had dared to
shock them with a violent brick-red scarf which she had bought in
Chicago.

She was led about the circle. Her voice mechanically produced safe
remarks:

"Oh, I'm sure I'm going to like it here ever so much," and "Yes, we did
have the best time in Colorado--mountains," and "Yes, I lived in St.
Paul several years. Euclid P. Tinker? No, I don't REMEMBER meeting him,
but I'm pretty sure I've heard of him."

Kennicott took her aside and whispered, "Now I'll introduce you to them,
one at a time."

"Tell me about them first."

"Well, the nice-looking couple over there are Harry Haydock and his
wife, Juanita. Harry's dad owns most of the Bon Ton, but it's Harry who
runs it and gives it the pep. He's a hustler. Next to him is Dave Dyer
the druggist--you met him this afternoon--mighty good duck-shot.
The tall husk beyond him is Jack Elder--Jackson Elder--owns the
planing-mill, and the Minniemashie House, and quite a share in the
Farmers' National Bank. Him and his wife are good sports--him and Sam
and I go hunting together a lot. The old cheese there is Luke Dawson,
the richest man in town. Next to him is Nat Hicks, the tailor."

"Really? A tailor?"

"Sure. Why not? Maybe we're slow, but we are democratic. I go hunting
with Nat same as I do with Jack Elder."

"I'm glad. I've never met a tailor socially. It must be charming to meet
one and not have to think about what you owe him. And do you----Would
you go hunting with your barber, too?"

"No but----No use running this democracy thing into the ground.
Besides, I've known Nat for years, and besides, he's a mighty good shot
and----That's the way it is, see? Next to Nat is Chet Dashaway. Great
fellow for chinning. He'll talk your arm off, about religion or politics
or books or anything."

Carol gazed with a polite approximation to interest at Mr. Dashaway,
a tan person with a wide mouth. "Oh, I know! He's the furniture-store
man!" She was much pleased with herself.

"Yump, and he's the undertaker. You'll like him. Come shake hands with
him."

"Oh no, no! He doesn't--he doesn't do the embalming and all
that--himself? I couldn't shake hands with an undertaker!"

"Why not? You'd be proud to shake hands with a great surgeon, just after
he'd been carving up people's bellies."

She sought to regain her afternoon's calm of maturity. "Yes. You're
right. I want--oh, my dear, do you know how much I want to like the
people you like? I want to see people as they are."

"Well, don't forget to see people as other folks see them as they are!
They have the stuff. Did you know that Percy Bresnahan came from here?
Born and brought up here!"

"Bresnahan?"

"Yes--you know--president of the Velvet Motor Company of Boston,
Mass.--make the Velvet Twelve--biggest automobile factory in New
England."

"I think I've heard of him."

"Sure you have. Why, he's a millionaire several times over! Well, Perce
comes back here for the black-bass fishing almost every summer, and he
says if he could get away from business, he'd rather live here than
in Boston or New York or any of those places. HE doesn't mind Chet's
undertaking."

"Please! I'll--I'll like everybody! I'll be the community sunbeam!"

He led her to the Dawsons.

Luke Dawson, lender of money on mortgages, owner of Northern cut-over
land, was a hesitant man in unpressed soft gray clothes, with bulging
eyes in a milky face. His wife had bleached cheeks, bleached hair,
bleached voice, and a bleached manner. She wore her expensive green
frock, with its passementeried bosom, bead tassels, and gaps between the
buttons down the back, as though she had bought it second-hand and was
afraid of meeting the former owner. They were shy. It was "Professor"
George Edwin Mott, superintendent of schools, a Chinese mandarin turned
brown, who held Carol's hand and made her welcome.

When the Dawsons and Mr. Mott had stated that they were "pleased to meet
her," there seemed to be nothing else to say, but the conversation went
on automatically.

"Do you like Gopher Prairie?" whimpered Mrs. Dawson.

"Oh, I'm sure I'm going to be ever so happy."

"There's so many nice people." Mrs. Dawson looked to Mr. Mott for social
and intellectual aid. He lectured:

"There's a fine class of people. I don't like some of these retired
farmers who come here to spend their last days--especially the Germans.
They hate to pay school-taxes. They hate to spend a cent. But the rest
are a fine class of people. Did you know that Percy Bresnahan came from
here? Used to go to school right at the old building!"

"I heard he did."

"Yes. He's a prince. He and I went fishing together, last time he was
here."

The Dawsons and Mr. Mott teetered upon weary feet, and smiled at Carol
with crystallized expressions. She went on:

"Tell me, Mr. Mott: Have you ever tried any experiments with any of the
new educational systems? The modern kindergarten methods or the Gary
system?"

"Oh. Those. Most of these would-be reformers are simply
notoriety-seekers. I believe in manual training, but Latin and
mathematics always will be the backbone of sound Americanism, no matter
what these faddists advocate--heaven knows what they do want--knitting,
I suppose, and classes in wiggling the ears!"

The Dawsons smiled their appreciation of listening to a savant. Carol
waited till Kennicott should rescue her. The rest of the party waited
for the miracle of being amused.

Harry and Juanita Haydock, Rita Simons and Dr. Terry Gould--the young
smart set of Gopher Prairie. She was led to them. Juanita Haydock flung
at her in a high, cackling, friendly voice:

"Well, this is SO nice to have you here. We'll have some good
parties--dances and everything. You'll have to join the Jolly Seventeen.
We play bridge and we have a supper once a month. You play, of course?"

"N-no, I don't."

"Really? In St. Paul?"

"I've always been such a book-worm."

"We'll have to teach you. Bridge is half the fun of life." Juanita had
become patronizing, and she glanced disrespectfully at Carol's golden
sash, which she had previously admired.

Harry Haydock said politely, "How do you think you're going to like the
old burg?"

"I'm sure I shall like it tremendously."

"Best people on earth here. Great hustlers, too. Course I've had lots
of chances to go live in Minneapolis, but we like it here. Real he-town.
Did you know that Percy Bresnahan came from here?"

Carol perceived that she had been weakened in the biological struggle
by disclosing her lack of bridge. Roused to nervous desire to regain
her position she turned on Dr. Terry Gould, the young and pool-playing
competitor of her husband. Her eyes coquetted with him while she gushed:

"I'll learn bridge. But what I really love most is the outdoors. Can't
we all get up a boating party, and fish, or whatever you do, and have a
picnic supper afterwards?"

"Now you're talking!" Dr. Gould affirmed. He looked rather too obviously
at the cream-smooth slope of her shoulder. "Like fishing? Fishing is my
middle name. I'll teach you bridge. Like cards at all?"

"I used to be rather good at bezique."

She knew that bezique was a game of cards--or a game of something else.
Roulette, possibly. But her lie was a triumph. Juanita's handsome,
high-colored, horsey face showed doubt. Harry stroked his nose and said
humbly, "Bezique? Used to be great gambling game, wasn't it?"

While others drifted to her group, Carol snatched up the conversation.
She laughed and was frivolous and rather brittle. She could not
distinguish their eyes. They were a blurry theater-audience before which
she self-consciously enacted the comedy of being the Clever Little Bride
of Doc Kennicott:

"These-here celebrated Open Spaces, that's what I'm going out for. I'll
never read anything but the sporting-page again. Will converted me on
our Colorado trip. There were so many mousey tourists who were afraid
to get out of the motor 'bus that I decided to be Annie Oakley, the Wild
Western Wampire, and I bought oh! a vociferous skirt which revealed
my perfectly nice ankles to the Presbyterian glare of all the Ioway
schoolma'ams, and I leaped from peak to peak like the nimble chamoys,
and----You may think that Herr Doctor Kennicott is a Nimrod, but you
ought to have seen me daring him to strip to his B. V. D.'s and go
swimming in an icy mountain brook."

She knew that they were thinking of becoming shocked, but Juanita
Haydock was admiring, at least. She swaggered on:

"I'm sure I'm going to ruin Will as a respectable practitioner----Is he
a good doctor, Dr. Gould?"

Kennicott's rival gasped at this insult to professional ethics, and he
took an appreciable second before he recovered his social manner.
"I'll tell you, Mrs. Kennicott." He smiled at Kennicott, to imply that
whatever he might say in the stress of being witty was not to count
against him in the commercio-medical warfare. "There's some people
in town that say the doc is a fair to middlin' diagnostician and
prescription-writer, but let me whisper this to you--but for heaven's
sake don't tell him I said so--don't you ever go to him for anything
more serious than a pendectomy of the left ear or a strabismus of the
cardiograph."

No one save Kennicott knew exactly what this meant, but they laughed,
and Sam Clark's party assumed a glittering lemon-yellow color of brocade
panels and champagne and tulle and crystal chandeliers and sporting
duchesses. Carol saw that George Edwin Mott and the blanched Mr. and
Mrs. Dawson were not yet hypnotized. They looked as though they wondered
whether they ought to look as though they disapproved. She concentrated
on them:

"But I know whom I wouldn't have dared to go to Colorado with! Mr.
Dawson there! I'm sure he's a regular heart-breaker. When we were
introduced he held my hand and squeezed it frightfully."

"Haw! Haw! Haw!" The entire company applauded. Mr. Dawson was beatified.
He had been called many things--loan-shark, skinflint, tightwad,
pussyfoot--but he had never before been called a flirt.

"He is wicked, isn't he, Mrs. Dawson? Don't you have to lock him up?"

"Oh no, but maybe I better," attempted Mrs. Dawson, a tint on her pallid
face.

For fifteen minutes Carol kept it up. She asserted that she was going
to stage a musical comedy, that she preferred cafe parfait to beefsteak,
that she hoped Dr. Kennicott would never lose his ability to make love
to charming women, and that she had a pair of gold stockings. They gaped
for more. But she could not keep it up. She retired to a chair behind
Sam Clark's bulk. The smile-wrinkles solemnly flattened out in the faces
of all the other collaborators in having a party, and again they stood
about hoping but not expecting to be amused.

Carol listened. She discovered that conversation did not exist in Gopher
Prairie. Even at this affair, which brought out the young smart set,
the hunting squire set, the respectable intellectual set, and the solid
financial set, they sat up with gaiety as with a corpse.

Juanita Haydock talked a good deal in her rattling voice but it was
invariably of personalities: the rumor that Raymie Wutherspoon was going
to send for a pair of patent leather shoes with gray buttoned tops; the
rheumatism of Champ Perry; the state of Guy Pollock's grippe; and the
dementia of Jim Howland in painting his fence salmon-pink.

Sam Clark had been talking to Carol about motor cars, but he felt
his duties as host. While he droned, his brows popped up and down. He
interrupted himself, "Must stir 'em up." He worried at his wife, "Don't
you think I better stir 'em up?" He shouldered into the center of the
room, and cried:

"Let's have some stunts, folks."

"Yes, let's!" shrieked Juanita Haydock.

"Say, Dave, give us that stunt about the Norwegian catching a hen."

"You bet; that's a slick stunt; do that, Dave!" cheered Chet Dashaway.

Mr. Dave Dyer obliged.

All the guests moved their lips in anticipation of being called on for
their own stunts.

"Ella, come on and recite 'Old Sweetheart of Mine,' for us," demanded
Sam.

Miss Ella Stowbody, the spinster daughter of the Ionic bank, scratched
her dry palms and blushed. "Oh, you don't want to hear that old thing
again."

"Sure we do! You bet!" asserted Sam.

"My voice is in terrible shape tonight."

"Tut! Come on!"

Sam loudly explained to Carol, "Ella is our shark at elocuting. She's
had professional training. She studied singing and oratory and dramatic
art and shorthand for a year, in Milwaukee."

Miss Stowbody was reciting. As encore to "An Old Sweetheart of Mine,"
she gave a peculiarly optimistic poem regarding the value of smiles.

There were four other stunts: one Jewish, one Irish, one juvenile, and
Nat Hicks's parody of Mark Antony's funeral oration.

During the winter Carol was to hear Dave Dyer's hen-catching
impersonation seven times, "An Old Sweetheart of Mine" nine times, the
Jewish story and the funeral oration twice; but now she was ardent
and, because she did so want to be happy and simple-hearted, she was as
disappointed as the others when the stunts were finished, and the party
instantly sank back into coma.

They gave up trying to be festive; they began to talk naturally, as they
did at their shops and homes.

The men and women divided, as they had been tending to do all evening.
Carol was deserted by the men, left to a group of matrons who steadily
pattered of children, sickness, and cooks--their own shop-talk. She was
piqued. She remembered visions of herself as a smart married woman in
a drawing-room, fencing with clever men. Her dejection was relieved by
speculation as to what the men were discussing, in the corner between
the piano and the phonograph. Did they rise from these housewifely
personalities to a larger world of abstractions and affairs?

She made her best curtsy to Mrs. Dawson; she twittered, "I won't have my
husband leaving me so soon! I'm going over and pull the wretch's
ears." She rose with a jeune fille bow. She was self-absorbed and
self-approving because she had attained that quality of sentimentality.
She proudly dipped across the room and, to the interest and commendation
of all beholders, sat on the arm of Kennicott's chair.

He was gossiping with Sam Clark, Luke Dawson, Jackson Elder of the
planing-mill, Chet Dashaway, Dave Dyer, Harry Haydock, and Ezra
Stowbody, president of the Ionic bank.

Ezra Stowbody was a troglodyte. He had come to Gopher Prairie in 1865.
He was a distinguished bird of prey--swooping thin nose, turtle mouth,
thick brows, port-wine cheeks, floss of white hair, contemptuous eyes.
He was not happy in the social changes of thirty years. Three decades
ago, Dr. Westlake, Julius Flickerbaugh the lawyer, Merriman Peedy the
Congregational pastor and himself had been the arbiters. That was as
it should be; the fine arts--medicine, law, religion, and
finance--recognized as aristocratic; four Yankees democratically
chatting with but ruling the Ohioans and Illini and Swedes and Germans
who had ventured to follow them. But Westlake was old, almost retired;
Julius Flickerbaugh had lost much of his practice to livelier attorneys;
Reverend (not The Reverend) Peedy was dead; and nobody was impressed in
this rotten age of automobiles by the "spanking grays" which Ezra still
drove. The town was as heterogeneous as Chicago. Norwegians and Germans
owned stores. The social leaders were common merchants. Selling nails
was considered as sacred as banking. These upstarts--the Clarks, the
Haydocks--had no dignity. They were sound and conservative in politics,
but they talked about motor cars and pump-guns and heaven only knew
what new-fangled fads. Mr. Stowbody felt out of place with them. But
his brick house with the mansard roof was still the largest residence in
town, and he held his position as squire by occasionally appearing among
the younger men and reminding them by a wintry eye that without the
banker none of them could carry on their vulgar businesses.

As Carol defied decency by sitting down with the men, Mr. Stowbody was
piping to Mr. Dawson, "Say, Luke, when was't Biggins first settled in
Winnebago Township? Wa'n't it in 1879?"

"Why no 'twa'n't!" Mr. Dawson was indignant. "He come out from Vermont
in 1867--no, wait, in 1868, it must have been--and took a claim on the
Rum River, quite a ways above Anoka."

"He did not!" roared Mr. Stowbody. "He settled first in Blue Earth
County, him and his father!"

("What's the point at issue?") Carol whispered to Kennicott.

("Whether this old duck Biggins had an English setter or a Llewellyn.
They've been arguing it all evening!")

Dave Dyer interrupted to give tidings, "D' tell you that Clara Biggins
was in town couple days ago? She bought a hot-water bottle--expensive
one, too--two dollars and thirty cents!"

"Yaaaaaah!" snarled Mr. Stowbody. "Course. She's just like her grandad
was. Never save a cent. Two dollars and twenty--thirty, was it?--two
dollars and thirty cents for a hot-water bottle! Brick wrapped up in a
flannel petticoat just as good, anyway!"

"How's Ella's tonsils, Mr. Stowbody?" yawned Chet Dashaway.

While Mr. Stowbody gave a somatic and psychic study of them, Carol
reflected, "Are they really so terribly interested in Ella's tonsils,
or even in Ella's esophagus? I wonder if I could get them away from
personalities? Let's risk damnation and try."

"There hasn't been much labor trouble around here, has there, Mr.
Stowbody?" she asked innocently.

"No, ma'am, thank God, we've been free from that, except maybe with
hired girls and farm-hands. Trouble enough with these foreign farmers;
if you don't watch these Swedes they turn socialist or populist or some
fool thing on you in a minute. Of course, if they have loans you can
make 'em listen to reason. I just have 'em come into the bank for a
talk, and tell 'em a few things. I don't mind their being democrats,
so much, but I won't stand having socialists around. But thank God, we
ain't got the labor trouble they have in these cities. Even Jack Elder
here gets along pretty well, in the planing-mill, don't you, Jack?"

"Yep. Sure. Don't need so many skilled workmen in my place, and it's
a lot of these cranky, wage-hogging, half-baked skilled mechanics that
start trouble--reading a lot of this anarchist literature and union
papers and all."

"Do you approve of union labor?" Carol inquired of Mr. Elder.

"Me? I should say not! It's like this: I don't mind dealing with my men
if they think they've got any grievances--though Lord knows what's come
over workmen, nowadays--don't appreciate a good job. But still, if they
come to me honestly, as man to man, I'll talk things over with them. But
I'm not going to have any outsider, any of these walking delegates, or
whatever fancy names they call themselves now--bunch of rich grafters,
living on the ignorant workmen! Not going to have any of those fellows
butting in and telling ME how to run MY business!"

Mr. Elder was growing more excited, more belligerent and patriotic. "I
stand for freedom and constitutional rights. If any man don't like my
shop, he can get up and git. Same way, if I don't like him, he gits.
And that's all there is to it. I simply can't understand all these
complications and hoop-te-doodles and government reports and wage-scales
and God knows what all that these fellows are balling up the labor
situation with, when it's all perfectly simple. They like what I pay
'em, or they get out. That's all there is to it!"

"What do you think of profit-sharing?" Carol ventured.

Mr. Elder thundered his answer, while the others nodded, solemnly and
in tune, like a shop-window of flexible toys, comic mandarins and judges
and ducks and clowns, set quivering by a breeze from the open door:

"All this profit-sharing and welfare work and insurance and old-age
pension is simply poppycock. Enfeebles a workman's independence--and
wastes a lot of honest profit. The half-baked thinker that isn't dry
behind the ears yet, and these suffragettes and God knows what all
buttinskis there are that are trying to tell a business man how to run
his business, and some of these college professors are just about as
bad, the whole kit and bilin' of 'em are nothing in God's world but
socialism in disguise! And it's my bounden duty as a producer to resist
every attack on the integrity of American industry to the last ditch.
Yes--SIR!"

Mr. Elder wiped his brow.

Dave Dyer added, "Sure! You bet! What they ought to do is simply to
hang every one of these agitators, and that would settle the whole thing
right off. Don't you think so, doc?"

"You bet," agreed Kennicott.

The conversation was at last relieved of the plague of Carol's
intrusions and they settled down to the question of whether the justice
of the peace had sent that hobo drunk to jail for ten days or twelve.
It was a matter not readily determined. Then Dave Dyer communicated his
carefree adventures on the gipsy trail:

"Yep. I get good time out of the flivver. 'Bout a week ago I motored
down to New Wurttemberg. That's forty-three----No, let's see: It's
seventeen miles to Belldale, and 'bout six and three-quarters, call it
seven, to Torgenquist, and it's a good nineteen miles from there to New
Wurttemberg--seventeen and seven and nineteen, that makes, uh, let me
see: seventeen and seven 's twenty-four, plus nineteen, well say plus
twenty, that makes forty-four, well anyway, say about forty-three
or -four miles from here to New Wurttemberg. We got started about
seven-fifteen, prob'ly seven-twenty, because I had to stop and fill the
radiator, and we ran along, just keeping up a good steady gait----"

Mr. Dyer did finally, for reasons and purposes admitted and justified,
attain to New Wurttemberg.

Once--only once--the presence of the alien Carol was recognized. Chet
Dashaway leaned over and said asthmatically, "Say, uh, have you been
reading this serial 'Two Out' in Tingling Tales? Corking yarn! Gosh, the
fellow that wrote it certainly can sling baseball slang!"

The others tried to look literary. Harry Haydock offered, "Juanita is
a great hand for reading high-class stuff, like 'Mid the Magnolias' by
this Sara Hetwiggin Butts, and 'Riders of Ranch Reckless.' Books. But
me," he glanced about importantly, as one convinced that no other hero
had ever been in so strange a plight, "I'm so darn busy I don't have
much time to read."

"I never read anything I can't check against," said Sam Clark.

Thus ended the literary portion of the conversation, and for seven
minutes Jackson Elder outlined reasons for believing that the
pike-fishing was better on the west shore of Lake Minniemashie than on
the east--though it was indeed quite true that on the east shore Nat
Hicks had caught a pike altogether admirable.

The talk went on. It did go on! Their voices were monotonous,
thick, emphatic. They were harshly pompous, like men in the
smoking-compartments of Pullman cars. They did not bore Carol. They
frightened her. She panted, "They will be cordial to me, because my man
belongs to their tribe. God help me if I were an outsider!"

Smiling as changelessly as an ivory figurine she sat quiescent, avoiding
thought, glancing about the living-room and hall, noting their betrayal
of unimaginative commercial prosperity. Kennicott said, "Dandy interior,
eh? My idea of how a place ought to be furnished. Modern." She looked
polite, and observed the oiled floors, hard-wood staircase, unused
fireplace with tiles which resembled brown linoleum, cut-glass vases
standing upon doilies, and the barred, shut, forbidding unit bookcases
that were half filled with swashbuckler novels and unread-looking sets
of Dickens, Kipling, O. Henry, and Elbert Hubbard.

She perceived that even personalities were failing to hold the party.
The room filled with hesitancy as with a fog. People cleared their
throats, tried to choke down yawns. The men shot their cuffs and the
women stuck their combs more firmly into their back hair.

Then a rattle, a daring hope in every eye, the swinging of a door, the
smell of strong coffee, Dave Dyer's mewing voice in a triumphant, "The
eats!" They began to chatter. They had something to do. They could
escape from themselves. They fell upon the food--chicken sandwiches,
maple cake, drug-store ice cream. Even when the food was gone they
remained cheerful. They could go home, any time now, and go to bed!

They went, with a flutter of coats, chiffon scarfs, and good-bys.

Carol and Kennicott walked home.

"Did you like them?" he asked.

"They were terribly sweet to me."

"Uh, Carrie----You ought to be more careful about shocking folks.
Talking about gold stockings, and about showing your ankles to
schoolteachers and all!" More mildly: "You gave 'em a good time, but I'd
watch out for that, 'f I were you. Juanita Haydock is such a damn cat. I
wouldn't give her a chance to criticize me."

"My poor effort to lift up the party! Was I wrong to try to amuse them?"

"No! No! Honey, I didn't mean----You were the only up-and-coming person
in the bunch. I just mean----Don't get onto legs and all that immoral
stuff. Pretty conservative crowd."

She was silent, raw with the shameful thought that the attentive circle
might have been criticizing her, laughing at her.

"Don't, please don't worry!" he pleaded.

"Silence."

"Gosh; I'm sorry I spoke about it. I just meant----But they were crazy
about you. Sam said to me, 'That little lady of yours is the slickest
thing that ever came to this town,' he said; and Ma Dawson--I didn't
hardly know whether she'd like you or not, she's such a dried-up old
bird, but she said, 'Your bride is so quick and bright, I declare, she
just wakes me up.'"

Carol liked praise, the flavor and fatness of it, but she was so
energetically being sorry for herself that she could not taste this
commendation.

"Please! Come on! Cheer up!" His lips said it, his anxious shoulder said
it, his arm about her said it, as they halted on the obscure porch of
their house.

"Do you care if they think I'm flighty, Will?"

"Me? Why, I wouldn't care if the whole world thought you were this or
that or anything else. You're my--well, you're my soul!"

He was an undefined mass, as solid-seeming as rock. She found his
sleeve, pinched it, cried, "I'm glad! It's sweet to be wanted! You must
tolerate my frivolousness. You're all I have!"

He lifted her, carried her into the house, and with her arms about his
neck she forgot Main Street.




CHAPTER V


I


"WE'LL steal the whole day, and go hunting. I want you to see the
country round here," Kennicott announced at breakfast. "I'd take the
car--want you to see how swell she runs since I put in a new piston.
But we'll take a team, so we can get right out into the fields. Not many
prairie chickens left now, but we might just happen to run onto a small
covey."

He fussed over his hunting-kit. He pulled his hip boots out to full
length and examined them for holes. He feverishly counted his shotgun
shells, lecturing her on the qualities of smokeless powder. He drew the
new hammerless shotgun out of its heavy tan leather case and made her
peep through the barrels to see how dazzlingly free they were from rust.

The world of hunting and camping-outfits and fishing-tackle was
unfamiliar to her, and in Kennicott's interest she found something
creative and joyous. She examined the smooth stock, the carved hard
rubber butt of the gun. The shells, with their brass caps and sleek
green bodies and hieroglyphics on the wads, were cool and comfortably
heavy in her hands.

Kennicott wore a brown canvas hunting-coat with vast pockets lining
the inside, corduroy trousers which bulged at the wrinkles, peeled and
scarred shoes, a scarecrow felt hat. In this uniform he felt virile.
They clumped out to the livery buggy, they packed the kit and the box of
lunch into the back, crying to each other that it was a magnificent day.

Kennicott had borrowed Jackson Elder's red and white English setter, a
complacent dog with a waving tail of silver hair which flickered in the
sunshine. As they started, the dog yelped, and leaped at the horses'
heads, till Kennicott took him into the buggy, where he nuzzled Carol's
knees and leaned out to sneer at farm mongrels.

The grays clattered out on the hard dirt road with a pleasant song of
hoofs: "Ta ta ta rat! Ta ta ta rat!" It was early and fresh, the air
whistling, frost bright on the golden rod. As the sun warmed the world
of stubble into a welter of yellow they turned from the highroad,
through the bars of a farmer's gate, into a field, slowly bumping over
the uneven earth. In a hollow of the rolling prairie they lost sight
even of the country road. It was warm and placid. Locusts trilled among
the dry wheat-stalks, and brilliant little flies hurtled across the
buggy. A buzz of content filled the air. Crows loitered and gossiped in
the sky.

The dog had been let out and after a dance of excitement he settled down
to a steady quartering of the field, forth and back, forth and back, his
nose down.

"Pete Rustad owns this farm, and he told me he saw a small covey of
chickens in the west forty, last week. Maybe we'll get some sport after
all," Kennicott chuckled blissfully.

She watched the dog in suspense, breathing quickly every time he seemed
to halt. She had no desire to slaughter birds, but she did desire to
belong to Kennicott's world.

The dog stopped, on the point, a forepaw held up.

"By golly! He's hit a scent! Come on!" squealed Kennicott. He leaped
from the buggy, twisted the reins about the whip-socket, swung her out,
caught up his gun, slipped in two shells, stalked toward the rigid dog,
Carol pattering after him. The setter crawled ahead, his tail quivering,
his belly close to the stubble. Carol was nervous. She expected clouds
of large birds to fly up instantly. Her eyes were strained with staring.
But they followed the dog for a quarter of a mile, turning, doubling,
crossing two low hills, kicking through a swale of weeds, crawling
between the strands of a barbed-wire fence. The walking was hard on
her pavement-trained feet. The earth was lumpy, the stubble prickly and
lined with grass, thistles, abortive stumps of clover. She dragged and
floundered.

She heard Kennicott gasp, "Look!" Three gray birds were starting up
from the stubble. They were round, dumpy, like enormous bumble bees.
Kennicott was sighting, moving the barrel. She was agitated. Why didn't
he fire? The birds would be gone! Then a crash, another, and two birds
turned somersaults in the air, plumped down.

When he showed her the birds she had no sensation of blood. These heaps
of feathers were so soft and unbruised--there was about them no hint of
death. She watched her conquering man tuck them into his inside pocket,
and trudged with him back to the buggy.

They found no more prairie chickens that morning.

At noon they drove into her first farmyard, a private village, a white
house with no porches save a low and quite dirty stoop at the back,
a crimson barn with white trimmings, a glazed brick silo, an
ex-carriage-shed, now the garage of a Ford, an unpainted cow-stable, a
chicken-house, a pig-pen, a corn-crib, a granary, the galvanized-iron
skeleton tower of a wind-mill. The dooryard was of packed yellow clay,
treeless, barren of grass, littered with rusty plowshares and wheels
of discarded cultivators. Hardened trampled mud, like lava, filled the
pig-pen. The doors of the house were grime-rubbed, the corners and eaves
were rusted with rain, and the child who stared at them from the kitchen
window was smeary-faced. But beyond the barn was a clump of scarlet
geraniums; the prairie breeze was sunshine in motion; the flashing metal
blades of the windmill revolved with a lively hum; a horse neighed, a
rooster crowed, martins flew in and out of the cow-stable.

A small spare woman with flaxen hair trotted from the house. She was
twanging a Swedish patois--not in monotone, like English, but singing
it, with a lyrical whine:

"Pete he say you kom pretty soon hunting, doctor. My, dot's fine you
kom. Is dis de bride? Ohhhh! Ve yoost say las' night, ve hope maybe ve
see her som day. My, soch a pretty lady!" Mrs. Rustad was shining with
welcome. "Vell, vell! Ay hope you lak dis country! Von't you stay for
dinner, doctor?"

"No, but I wonder if you wouldn't like to give us a glass of milk?"
condescended Kennicott.

"Vell Ay should say Ay vill! You vait har a second and Ay run on de
milk-house!" She nervously hastened to a tiny red building beside the
windmill; she came back with a pitcher of milk from which Carol filled
the thermos bottle.

As they drove off Carol admired, "She's the dearest thing I ever saw.
And she adores you. You are the Lord of the Manor."

"Oh no," much pleased, "but still they do ask my advice about things.
Bully people, these Scandinavian farmers. And prosperous, too. Helga
Rustad, she's still scared of America, but her kids will be doctors and
lawyers and governors of the state and any darn thing they want to."

"I wonder----" Carol was plunged back into last night's Weltschmerz.
"I wonder if these farmers aren't bigger than we are? So simple and
hard-working. The town lives on them. We townies are parasites, and yet
we feel superior to them. Last night I heard Mr. Haydock talking about
'hicks.' Apparently he despises the farmers because they haven't reached
the social heights of selling thread and buttons."

"Parasites? Us? Where'd the farmers be without the town? Who lends them
money? Who--why, we supply them with everything!"

"Don't you find that some of the farmers think they pay too much for the
services of the towns?"

"Oh, of course there's a lot of cranks among the farmers same as there
are among any class. Listen to some of these kickers, a fellow'd
think that the farmers ought to run the state and the whole
shooting-match--probably if they had their way they'd fill up the
legislature with a lot of farmers in manure-covered boots--yes, and
they'd come tell me I was hired on a salary now, and couldn't fix my
fees! That'd be fine for you, wouldn't it!"

"But why shouldn't they?"

"Why? That bunch of----Telling ME----Oh, for heaven's sake, let's quit
arguing. All this discussing may be all right at a party but----Let's
forget it while we're hunting."

"I know. The Wonderlust--probably it's a worse affliction than the
Wanderlust. I just wonder----"

She told herself that she had everything in the world. And after each
self-rebuke she stumbled again on "I just wonder----"

They ate their sandwiches by a prairie slew: long grass reaching up out
of clear water, mossy bogs, red-winged black-birds, the scum a splash of
gold-green. Kennicott smoked a pipe while she leaned back in the buggy
and let her tired spirit be absorbed in the Nirvana of the incomparable
sky.

They lurched to the highroad and awoke from their sun-soaked drowse at
the sound of the clopping hoofs. They paused to look for partridges in a
rim of woods, little woods, very clean and shiny and gay, silver birches
and poplars with immaculate green trunks, encircling a lake of sandy
bottom, a splashing seclusion demure in the welter of hot prairie.

Kennicott brought down a fat red squirrel and at dusk he had a dramatic
shot at a flight of ducks whirling down from the upper air, skimming the
lake, instantly vanishing.

They drove home under the sunset. Mounds of straw, and wheat-stacks like
bee-hives, stood out in startling rose and gold, and the green-tufted
stubble glistened. As the vast girdle of crimson darkened, the fulfilled
land became autumnal in deep reds and browns. The black road before
the buggy turned to a faint lavender, then was blotted to uncertain
grayness. Cattle came in a long line up to the barred gates of the
farmyards, and over the resting land was a dark glow.

Carol had found the dignity and greatness which had failed her in Main
Street.



II


Till they had a maid they took noon dinner and six o'clock supper at
Mrs. Gurrey's boarding-house.

Mrs. Elisha Gurrey, relict of Deacon Gurrey the dealer in hay and grain,
was a pointed-nosed, simpering woman with iron-gray hair drawn so tight
that it resembled a soiled handkerchief covering her head. But she was
unexpectedly cheerful, and her dining-room, with its thin tablecloth on
a long pine table, had the decency of clean bareness.

In the line of unsmiling, methodically chewing guests, like horses at
a manger, Carol came to distinguish one countenance: the pale, long,
spectacled face and sandy pompadour hair of Mr. Raymond P. Wutherspoon,
known as "Raymie," professional bachelor, manager and one half the
sales-force in the shoe-department of the Bon Ton Store.

"You will enjoy Gopher Prairie very much, Mrs. Kennicott," petitioned
Raymie. His eyes were like those of a dog waiting to be let in out of
the cold. He passed the stewed apricots effusively. "There are a great
many bright cultured people here. Mrs. Wilks, the Christian Science
reader, is a very bright woman--though I am not a Scientist myself,
in fact I sing in the Episcopal choir. And Miss Sherwin of the high
school--she is such a pleasing, bright girl--I was fitting her to a pair
of tan gaiters yesterday, I declare, it really was a pleasure."

"Gimme the butter, Carrie," was Kennicott's comment. She defied him by
encouraging Raymie:

"Do you have amateur dramatics and so on here?"

"Oh yes! The town's just full of talent. The Knights of Pythias put on a
dandy minstrel show last year."

"It's nice you're so enthusiastic."

"Oh, do you really think so? Lots of folks jolly me for trying to get
up shows and so on. I tell them they have more artistic gifts than they
know. Just yesterday I was saying to Harry Haydock: if he would read
poetry, like Longfellow, or if he would join the band--I get so much
pleasure out of playing the cornet, and our band-leader, Del Snafflin,
is such a good musician, I often say he ought to give up his barbering
and become a professional musician, he could play the clarinet in
Minneapolis or New York or anywhere, but--but I couldn't get Harry to
see it at all and--I hear you and the doctor went out hunting yesterday.
Lovely country, isn't it. And did you make some calls? The mercantile
life isn't inspiring like medicine. It must be wonderful to see how
patients trust you, doctor."

"Huh. It's me that's got to do all the trusting. Be damn sight more
wonderful 'f they'd pay their bills," grumbled Kennicott and, to Carol,
he whispered something which sounded like "gentleman hen."

But Raymie's pale eyes were watering at her. She helped him with, "So
you like to read poetry?"

"Oh yes, so much--though to tell the truth, I don't get much time
for reading, we're always so busy at the store and----But we had the
dandiest professional reciter at the Pythian Sisters sociable last
winter."

Carol thought she heard a grunt from the traveling salesman at the end
of the table, and Kennicott's jerking elbow was a grunt embodied. She
persisted:

"Do you get to see many plays, Mr. Wutherspoon?"

He shone at her like a dim blue March moon, and sighed, "No, but I do
love the movies. I'm a real fan. One trouble with books is that they're
not so thoroughly safeguarded by intelligent censors as the movies are,
and when you drop into the library and take out a book you never know
what you're wasting your time on. What I like in books is a wholesome,
really improving story, and sometimes----Why, once I started a novel by
this fellow Balzac that you read about, and it told how a lady wasn't
living with her husband, I mean she wasn't his wife. It went into
details, disgustingly! And the English was real poor. I spoke to the
library about it, and they took it off the shelves. I'm not narrow,
but I must say I don't see any use in this deliberately dragging in
immorality! Life itself is so full of temptations that in literature one
wants only that which is pure and uplifting."

"What's the name of that Balzac yarn? Where can I get hold of it?"
giggled the traveling salesman.

Raymie ignored him. "But the movies, they are mostly clean, and their
humor----Don't you think that the most essential quality for a person to
have is a sense of humor?"

"I don't know. I really haven't much," said Carol.

He shook his finger at her. "Now, now, you're too modest. I'm sure we
can all see that you have a perfectly corking sense of humor. Besides,
Dr. Kennicott wouldn't marry a lady that didn't have. We all know how he
loves his fun!"

"You bet. I'm a jokey old bird. Come on, Carrie; let's beat it,"
remarked Kennicott.

Raymie implored, "And what is your chief artistic interest, Mrs.
Kennicott?"

"Oh----" Aware that the traveling salesman had murmured, "Dentistry,"
she desperately hazarded, "Architecture."

"That's a real nice art. I've always said--when Haydock & Simons were
finishing the new front on the Bon Ton building, the old man came to me,
you know, Harry's father, 'D. H.,' I always call him, and he asked me
how I liked it, and I said to him, 'Look here, D. H.,' I said--you see,
he was going to leave the front plain, and I said to him, 'It's all very
well to have modern lighting and a big display-space,' I said, 'but when
you get that in, you want to have some architecture, too,' I said, and
he laughed and said he guessed maybe I was right, and so he had 'em put
on a cornice."

"Tin!" observed the traveling salesman.

Raymie bared his teeth like a belligerent mouse. "Well, what if it is
tin? That's not my fault. I told D. H. to make it polished granite. You
make me tired!"

"Leave us go! Come on, Carrie, leave us go!" from Kennicott.

Raymie waylaid them in the hall and secretly informed Carol that she
musn't mind the traveling salesman's coarseness--he belonged to the
hwa pollwa.

Kennicott chuckled, "Well, child, how about it? Do you prefer an
artistic guy like Raymie to stupid boobs like Sam Clark and me?"

"My dear! Let's go home, and play pinochle, and laugh, and be foolish,
and slip up to bed, and sleep without dreaming. It's beautiful to be
just a solid citizeness!"



III

From the Gopher Prairie Weekly Dauntless:


One of the most charming affairs of the season was held Tuesday evening
at the handsome new residence of Sam and Mrs. Clark when many of our
most prominent citizens gathered to greet the lovely new bride of our
popular local physician, Dr. Will Kennicott. All present spoke of the
many charms of the bride, formerly Miss Carol Milford of St. Paul. Games
and stunts were the order of the day, with merry talk and conversation.
At a late hour dainty refreshments were served, and the party broke up
with many expressions of pleasure at the pleasant affair. Among those
present were Mesdames Kennicott, Elder----

* * * * *

Dr. Will Kennicott, for the past several years one of our most popular
and skilful physicians and surgeons, gave the town a delightful surprise
when he returned from an extended honeymoon tour in Colorado this week
with his charming bride, nee Miss Carol Milford of St. Paul, whose
family are socially prominent in Minneapolis and Mankato. Mrs. Kennicott
is a lady of manifold charms, not only of striking charm of appearance
but is also a distinguished graduate of a school in the East and has
for the past year been prominently connected in an important position
of responsibility with the St. Paul Public Library, in which city Dr.
"Will" had the good fortune to meet her. The city of Gopher Prairie
welcomes her to our midst and prophesies for her many happy years in
the energetic city of the twin lakes and the future. The Dr. and Mrs.
Kennicott will reside for the present at the Doctor's home on Poplar
Street which his charming mother has been keeping for him who has now
returned to her own home at Lac-qui-Meurt leaving a host of friends who
regret her absence and hope to see her soon with us again.



IV


She knew that if she was ever to effect any of the "reforms" which she
had pictured, she must have a starting-place. What confused her during
the three or four months after her marriage was not lack of perception
that she must be definite, but sheer careless happiness of her first
home.

In the pride of being a housewife she loved every detail--the brocade
armchair with the weak back, even the brass water-cock on the hot-water
reservoir, when she had become familiar with it by trying to scour it to
brilliance.

She found a maid--plump radiant Bea Sorenson from Scandia Crossing. Bea
was droll in her attempt to be at once a respectful servant and a bosom
friend. They laughed together over the fact that the stove did not draw,
over the slipperiness of fish in the pan.

Like a child playing Grandma in a trailing skirt, Carol paraded uptown
for her marketing, crying greetings to housewives along the way.
Everybody bowed to her, strangers and all, and made her feel that they
wanted her, that she belonged here. In city shops she was merely A
Customer--a hat, a voice to bore a harassed clerk. Here she was Mrs. Doc
Kennicott, and her preferences in grape-fruit and manners were known
and remembered and worth discussing . . . even if they weren't worth
fulfilling.

Shopping was a delight of brisk conferences. The very merchants whose
droning she found the dullest at the two or three parties which were
given to welcome her were the pleasantest confidants of all when they
had something to talk about--lemons or cotton voile or floor-oil.
With that skip-jack Dave Dyer, the druggist, she conducted a long
mock-quarrel. She pretended that he cheated her in the price of
magazines and candy; he pretended she was a detective from the Twin
Cities. He hid behind the prescription-counter, and when she stamped
her foot he came out wailing, "Honest, I haven't done nothing crooked
today--not yet."

She never recalled her first impression of Main Street; never
had precisely the same despair at its ugliness. By the end of two
shopping-tours everything had changed proportions. As she never entered
it, the Minniemashie House ceased to exist for her. Clark's Hardware
Store, Dyer's Drug Store, the groceries of Ole Jenson and Frederick
Ludelmeyer and Howland & Gould, the meat markets, the notions
shop--they expanded, and hid all other structures. When she entered Mr.
Ludelmeyer's store and he wheezed, "Goot mornin', Mrs. Kennicott. Vell,
dis iss a fine day," she did not notice the dustiness of the shelves
nor the stupidity of the girl clerk; and she did not remember the mute
colloquy with him on her first view of Main Street.

She could not find half the kinds of food she wanted, but that made
shopping more of an adventure. When she did contrive to get sweetbreads
at Dahl & Oleson's Meat Market the triumph was so vast that she buzzed
with excitement and admired the strong wise butcher, Mr. Dahl.

She appreciated the homely ease of village life. She liked the old men,
farmers, G.A.R. veterans, who when they gossiped sometimes squatted on
their heels on the sidewalk, like resting Indians, and reflectively spat
over the curb.

She found beauty in the children.

She had suspected that her married friends exaggerated their passion
for children. But in her work in the library, children had become
individuals to her, citizens of the State with their own rights and
their own senses of humor. In the library she had not had much time
to give them, but now she knew the luxury of stopping, gravely asking
Bessie Clark whether her doll had yet recovered from its rheumatism, and
agreeing with Oscar Martinsen that it would be Good Fun to go trapping
"mushrats."

She touched the thought, "It would be sweet to have a baby of my own. I
do want one. Tiny----No! Not yet! There's so much to do. And I'm still
tired from the job. It's in my bones."

She rested at home. She listened to the village noises common to all
the world, jungle or prairie; sounds simple and charged with magic--dogs
barking, chickens making a gurgling sound of content, children at play,
a man beating a rug, wind in the cottonwood trees, a locust fiddling,
a footstep on the walk, jaunty voices of Bea and a grocer's boy in the
kitchen, a clinking anvil, a piano--not too near.

Twice a week, at least, she drove into the country with Kennicott, to
hunt ducks in lakes enameled with sunset, or to call on patients who
looked up to her as the squire's lady and thanked her for toys and
magazines. Evenings she went with her husband to the motion pictures and
was boisterously greeted by every other couple; or, till it became too
cold, they sat on the porch, bawling to passers-by in motors, or to
neighbors who were raking the leaves. The dust became golden in the low
sun; the street was filled with the fragrance of burning leaves.



V


But she hazily wanted some one to whom she could say what she thought.

On a slow afternoon when she fidgeted over sewing and wished that the
telephone would ring, Bea announced Miss Vida Sherwin.

Despite Vida Sherwin's lively blue eyes, if you had looked at her in
detail you would have found her face slightly lined, and not so much
sallow as with the bloom rubbed off; you would have found her chest
flat, and her fingers rough from needle and chalk and penholder; her
blouses and plain cloth skirts undistinguished; and her hat worn too far
back, betraying a dry forehead. But you never did look at Vida Sherwin
in detail. You couldn't. Her electric activity veiled her. She was as
energetic as a chipmunk. Her fingers fluttered; her sympathy came out
in spurts; she sat on the edge of a chair in eagerness to be near her
auditor, to send her enthusiasms and optimism across.

She rushed into the room pouring out: "I'm afraid you'll think the
teachers have been shabby in not coming near you, but we wanted to
give you a chance to get settled. I am Vida Sherwin, and I try to teach
French and English and a few other things in the high school."

"I've been hoping to know the teachers. You see, I was a librarian----"

"Oh, you needn't tell me. I know all about you! Awful how much I
know--this gossipy village. We need you so much here. It's a dear loyal
town (and isn't loyalty the finest thing in the world!) but it's a
rough diamond, and we need you for the polishing, and we're ever so
humble----" She stopped for breath and finished her compliment with a
smile.

"If I COULD help you in any way----Would I be committing the
unpardonable sin if I whispered that I think Gopher Prairie is a tiny
bit ugly?"

"Of course it's ugly. Dreadfully! Though I'm probably the only person in
town to whom you could safely say that. (Except perhaps Guy Pollock
the lawyer--have you met him?--oh, you MUST!--he's simply a
darling--intelligence and culture and so gentle.) But I don't care so
much about the ugliness. That will change. It's the spirit that gives
me hope. It's sound. Wholesome. But afraid. It needs live creatures like
you to awaken it. I shall slave-drive you!"

"Splendid. What shall I do? I've been wondering if it would be possible
to have a good architect come here to lecture."

"Ye-es, but don't you think it would be better to work with existing
agencies? Perhaps it will sound slow to you, but I was thinking----It
would be lovely if we could get you to teach Sunday School."

Carol had the empty expression of one who finds that she has been
affectionately bowing to a complete stranger. "Oh yes. But I'm afraid I
wouldn't be much good at that. My religion is so foggy."

"I know. So is mine. I don't care a bit for dogma. Though I do stick
firmly to the belief in the fatherhood of God and the brotherhood of man
and the leadership of Jesus. As you do, of course."

Carol looked respectable and thought about having tea.

"And that's all you need teach in Sunday School. It's the personal
influence. Then there's the library-board. You'd be so useful on that.
And of course there's our women's study club--the Thanatopsis Club."

"Are they doing anything? Or do they read papers made out of the
Encyclopedia?"

Miss Sherwin shrugged. "Perhaps. But still, they are so earnest. They
will respond to your fresher interest. And the Thanatopsis does do a
good social work--they've made the city plant ever so many trees, and
they run the rest-room for farmers' wives. And they do take such an
interest in refinement and culture. So--in fact, so very unique."

Carol was disappointed--by nothing very tangible. She said politely,
"I'll think them all over. I must have a while to look around first."

Miss Sherwin darted to her, smoothed her hair, peered at her. "Oh,
my dear, don't you suppose I know? These first tender days of
marriage--they're sacred to me. Home, and children that need you, and
depend on you to keep them alive, and turn to you with their wrinkly
little smiles. And the hearth and----" She hid her face from Carol as
she made an activity of patting the cushion of her chair, but she went
on with her former briskness:

"I mean, you must help us when you're ready. . . . I'm afraid you'll
think I'm conservative. I am! So much to conserve. All this treasure of
American ideals. Sturdiness and democracy and opportunity. Maybe not at
Palm Beach. But, thank heaven, we're free from such social distinctions
in Gopher Prairie. I have only one good quality--overwhelming belief in
the brains and hearts of our nation, our state, our town. It's so strong
that sometimes I do have a tiny effect on the haughty ten-thousandaires.
I shake 'em up and make 'em believe in ideals--yes, in themselves. But
I get into a rut of teaching. I need young critical things like you to
punch me up. Tell me, what are you reading?"

"I've been re-reading 'The Damnation of Theron Ware.' Do you know it?"

"Yes. It was clever. But hard. Man wanted to tear down, not build up.
Cynical. Oh, I do hope I'm not a sentimentalist. But I can't see any use
in this high-art stuff that doesn't encourage us day-laborers to plod
on."

Ensued a fifteen-minute argument about the oldest topic in the world:
It's art but is it pretty? Carol tried to be eloquent regarding honesty
of observation. Miss Sherwin stood out for sweetness and a cautious use
of the uncomfortable properties of light. At the end Carol cried:

"I don't care how much we disagree. It's a relief to have somebody
talk something besides crops. Let's make Gopher Prairie rock to its
foundations: let's have afternoon tea instead of afternoon coffee."

The delighted Bea helped her bring out the ancestral folding
sewing-table, whose yellow and black top was scarred with dotted lines
from a dressmaker's tracing-wheel, and to set it with an embroidered
lunch-cloth, and the mauve-glazed Japanese tea-set which she had brought
from St. Paul. Miss Sherwin confided her latest scheme--moral motion
pictures for country districts, with light from a portable dynamo
hitched to a Ford engine. Bea was twice called to fill the hot-water
pitcher and to make cinnamon toast.

When Kennicott came home at five he tried to be courtly, as befits the
husband of one who has afternoon tea. Carol suggested that Miss Sherwin
stay for supper, and that Kennicott invite Guy Pollock, the much-praised
lawyer, the poetic bachelor.

Yes, Pollock could come. Yes, he was over the grippe which had prevented
his going to Sam Clark's party.

Carol regretted her impulse. The man would be an opinionated politician,
heavily jocular about The Bride. But at the entrance of Guy Pollock she
discovered a personality. Pollock was a man of perhaps thirty-eight,
slender, still, deferential. His voice was low. "It was very good of you
to want me," he said, and he offered no humorous remarks, and did not
ask her if she didn't think Gopher Prairie was "the livest little burg
in the state."

She fancied that his even grayness might reveal a thousand tints of
lavender and blue and silver.

At supper he hinted his love for Sir Thomas Browne, Thoreau, Agnes
Repplier, Arthur Symons, Claude Washburn, Charles Flandrau. He presented
his idols diffidently, but he expanded in Carol's bookishness, in Miss
Sherwin's voluminous praise, in Kennicott's tolerance of any one who
amused his wife.

Carol wondered why Guy Pollock went on digging at routine law-cases;
why he remained in Gopher Prairie. She had no one whom she could ask.
Neither Kennicott nor Vida Sherwin would understand that there might be
reasons why a Pollock should not remain in Gopher Prairie. She enjoyed
the faint mystery. She felt triumphant and rather literary. She already
had a Group. It would be only a while now before she provided the town
with fanlights and a knowledge of Galsworthy. She was doing things! As
she served the emergency dessert of cocoanut and sliced oranges, she
cried to Pollock, "Don't you think we ought to get up a dramatic club?"




CHAPTER VI


I

WHEN the first dubious November snow had filtered down, shading with
white the bare clods in the plowed fields, when the first small fire
had been started in the furnace, which is the shrine of a Gopher Prairie
home, Carol began to make the house her own. She dismissed the parlor
furniture--the golden oak table with brass knobs, the moldy brocade
chairs, the picture of "The Doctor." She went to Minneapolis, to scamper
through department stores and small Tenth Street shops devoted to
ceramics and high thought. She had to ship her treasures, but she wanted
to bring them back in her arms.

Carpenters had torn out the partition between front parlor and back
parlor, thrown it into a long room on which she lavished yellow and
deep blue; a Japanese obi with an intricacy of gold thread on stiff
ultramarine tissue, which she hung as a panel against the maize wall; a
couch with pillows of sapphire velvet and gold bands; chairs which, in
Gopher Prairie, seemed flippant. She hid the sacred family phonograph in
the dining-room, and replaced its stand with a square cabinet on which
was a squat blue jar between yellow candles.

Kennicott decided against a fireplace. "We'll have a new house in a
couple of years, anyway."

She decorated only one room. The rest, Kennicott hinted, she'd better
leave till he "made a ten-strike."

The brown cube of a house stirred and awakened; it seemed to be in
motion; it welcomed her back from shopping; it lost its mildewed
repression.

The supreme verdict was Kennicott's "Well, by golly, I was afraid the
new junk wouldn't be so comfortable, but I must say this divan, or
whatever you call it, is a lot better than that bumpy old sofa we had,
and when I look around----Well, it's worth all it cost, I guess."

Every one in town took an interest in the refurnishing. The carpenters
and painters who did not actually assist crossed the lawn to peer
through the windows and exclaim, "Fine! Looks swell!" Dave Dyer at
the drug store, Harry Haydock and Raymie Wutherspoon at the Bon Ton,
repeated daily, "How's the good work coming? I hear the house is getting
to be real classy."

Even Mrs. Bogart.

Mrs. Bogart lived across the alley from the rear of Carol's house. She
was a widow, and a Prominent Baptist, and a Good Influence. She had so
painfully reared three sons to be Christian gentlemen that one of them
had become an Omaha bartender, one a professor of Greek, and one, Cyrus
N. Bogart, a boy of fourteen who was still at home, the most brazen
member of the toughest gang in Boytown.

Mrs. Bogart was not the acid type of Good Influence. She was the soft,
damp, fat, sighing, indigestive, clinging, melancholy, depressingly
hopeful kind. There are in every large chicken-yard a number of old and
indignant hens who resemble Mrs. Bogart, and when they are served at
Sunday noon dinner, as fricasseed chicken with thick dumplings, they
keep up the resemblance.

Carol had noted that Mrs. Bogart from her side window kept an eye upon
the house. The Kennicotts and Mrs. Bogart did not move in the same
sets--which meant precisely the same in Gopher Prairie as it did on
Fifth Avenue or in Mayfair. But the good widow came calling.

She wheezed in, sighed, gave Carol a pulpy hand, sighed, glanced sharply
at the revelation of ankles as Carol crossed her legs, sighed, inspected
the new blue chairs, smiled with a coy sighing sound, and gave voice:

"I've wanted to call on you so long, dearie, you know we're neighbors,
but I thought I'd wait till you got settled, you must run in and see me,
how much did that big chair cost?"

"Seventy-seven dollars!"

"Sev----Sakes alive! Well, I suppose it's all right for them that can
afford it, though I do sometimes think----Of course as our pastor said
once, at Baptist Church----By the way, we haven't seen you there yet,
and of course your husband was raised up a Baptist, and I do hope
he won't drift away from the fold, of course we all know there isn't
anything, not cleverness or gifts of gold or anything, that can make
up for humility and the inward grace and they can say what they want to
about the P. E. church, but of course there's no church that has more
history or has stayed by the true principles of Christianity better
than the Baptist Church and----In what church were you raised, Mrs.
Kennicott?"

"W-why, I went to Congregational, as a girl in Mankato, but my college
was Universalist."

"Well----But of course as the Bible says, is it the Bible, at least I
know I have heard it in church and everybody admits it, it's proper for
the little bride to take her husband's vessel of faith, so we all hope
we shall see you at the Baptist Church and----As I was saying, of course
I agree with Reverend Zitterel in thinking that the great trouble with
this nation today is lack of spiritual faith--so few going to church,
and people automobiling on Sunday and heaven knows what all. But still
I do think that one trouble is this terrible waste of money, people
feeling that they've got to have bath-tubs and telephones in their
houses----I heard you were selling the old furniture cheap."

"Yes!"

"Well--of course you know your own mind, but I can't help thinking, when
Will's ma was down here keeping house for him--SHE used to run in to SEE
me, real OFTEN!--it was good enough furniture for her. But there, there,
I mustn't croak, I just wanted to let you know that when you find you
can't depend on a lot of these gadding young folks like the Haydocks and
the Dyers--and heaven only knows how much money Juanita Haydock blows in
in a year--why then you may be glad to know that slow old Aunty Bogart
is always right there, and heaven knows----" A portentous sigh. "--I
HOPE you and your husband won't have any of the troubles, with sickness
and quarreling and wasting money and all that so many of these young
couples do have and----But I must be running along now, dearie. It's
been such a pleasure and----Just run in and see me any time. I hope Will
is well? I thought he looked a wee mite peaked."

It was twenty minutes later when Mrs. Bogart finally oozed out of the
front door. Carol ran back into the living-room and jerked open the
windows. "That woman has left damp finger-prints in the air," she said.



II


Carol was extravagant, but at least she did not try to clear herself of
blame by going about whimpering, "I know I'm terribly extravagant but I
don't seem to be able to help it."

Kennicott had never thought of giving her an allowance. His mother had
never had one! As a wage-earning spinster Carol had asserted to her
fellow librarians that when she was married, she was going to have an
allowance and be business-like and modern. But it was too much trouble
to explain to Kennicott's kindly stubbornness that she was a practical
housekeeper as well as a flighty playmate. She bought a budget-plan
account book and made her budgets as exact as budgets are likely to be
when they lack budgets.

For the first month it was a honeymoon jest to beg prettily, to confess,
"I haven't a cent in the house, dear," and to be told, "You're an
extravagant little rabbit." But the budget book made her realize how
inexact were her finances. She became self-conscious; occasionally she
was indignant that she should always have to petition him for the money
with which to buy his food. She caught herself criticizing his belief
that, since his joke about trying to keep her out of the poorhouse had
once been accepted as admirable humor, it should continue to be his
daily bon mot. It was a nuisance to have to run down the street after
him because she had forgotten to ask him for money at breakfast.

But she couldn't "hurt his feelings," she reflected. He liked the
lordliness of giving largess.

She tried to reduce the frequency of begging by opening accounts and
having the bills sent to him. She had found that staple groceries,
sugar, flour, could be most cheaply purchased at Axel Egge's rustic
general store. She said sweetly to Axel:

"I think I'd better open a charge account here."

"I don't do no business except for cash," grunted Axel.

She flared, "Do you know who I am?"

"Yuh, sure, I know. The doc is good for it. But that's yoost a rule I
made. I make low prices. I do business for cash."

She stared at his red impassive face, and her fingers had the
undignified desire to slap him, but her reason agreed with him. "You're
quite right. You shouldn't break your rule for me."

Her rage had not been lost. It had been transferred to her husband. She
wanted ten pounds of sugar in a hurry, but she had no money. She ran up
the stairs to Kennicott's office. On the door was a sign advertising a
headache cure and stating, "The doctor is out, back at----" Naturally,
the blank space was not filled out. She stamped her foot. She ran down
to the drug store--the doctor's club.

As she entered she heard Mrs. Dyer demanding, "Dave, I've got to have
some money."

Carol saw that her husband was there, and two other men, all listening
in amusement.

Dave Dyer snapped, "How much do you want? Dollar be enough?"

"No, it won't! I've got to get some underclothes for the kids."

"Why, good Lord, they got enough now to fill the closet so I couldn't
find my hunting boots, last time I wanted them."

"I don't care. They're all in rags. You got to give me ten dollars----"

Carol perceived that Mrs. Dyer was accustomed to this indignity. She
perceived that the men, particularly Dave, regarded it as an excellent
jest. She waited--she knew what would come--it did. Dave yelped,
"Where's that ten dollars I gave you last year?" and he looked to the
other men to laugh. They laughed.

Cold and still, Carol walked up to Kennicott and commanded, "I want to
see you upstairs."

"Why--something the matter?"

"Yes!"

He clumped after her, up the stairs, into his barren office. Before he
could get out a query she stated:

"Yesterday, in front of a saloon, I heard a German farm-wife beg her
husband for a quarter, to get a toy for the baby--and he refused. Just
now I've heard Mrs. Dyer going through the same humiliation. And I--I'm
in the same position! I have to beg you for money. Daily! I have just
been informed that I couldn't have any sugar because I hadn't the money
to pay for it!"

"Who said that? By God, I'll kill any----"

"Tut. It wasn't his fault. It was yours. And mine. I now humbly beg
you to give me the money with which to buy meals for you to eat. And
hereafter to remember it. The next time, I sha'n't beg. I shall simply
starve. Do you understand? I can't go on being a slave----"

Her defiance, her enjoyment of the role, ran out. She was sobbing
against his overcoat, "How can you shame me so?" and he was blubbering,
"Dog-gone it, I meant to give you some, and I forgot it. I swear I won't
again. By golly I won't!"

He pressed fifty dollars upon her, and after that he remembered to give
her money regularly . . . sometimes.

Daily she determined, "But I must have a stated amount--be
business-like. System. I must do something about it." And daily she
didn't do anything about it.



III


Mrs. Bogart had, by the simpering viciousness of her comments on the new
furniture, stirred Carol to economy. She spoke judiciously to Bea
about left-overs. She read the cookbook again and, like a child with
a picture-book, she studied the diagram of the beef which gallantly
continues to browse though it is divided into cuts.

But she was a deliberate and joyous spendthrift in her preparations for
her first party, the housewarming. She made lists on every envelope
and laundry-slip in her desk. She sent orders to Minneapolis "fancy
grocers." She pinned patterns and sewed. She was irritated when
Kennicott was jocular about "these frightful big doings that are going
on." She regarded the affair as an attack on Gopher Prairie's timidity
in pleasure. "I'll make 'em lively, if nothing else. I'll make 'em stop
regarding parties as committee-meetings."

Kennicott usually considered himself the master of the house. At his
desire, she went hunting, which was his symbol of happiness, and she
ordered porridge for breakfast, which was his symbol of morality. But
when he came home on the afternoon before the housewarming he found
himself a slave, an intruder, a blunderer. Carol wailed, "Fix the
furnace so you won't have to touch it after supper. And for heaven's
sake take that horrible old door-mat off the porch. And put on your nice
brown and white shirt. Why did you come home so late? Would you mind
hurrying? Here it is almost suppertime, and those fiends are just as
likely as not to come at seven instead of eight. PLEASE hurry!"

She was as unreasonable as an amateur leading woman on a first night,
and he was reduced to humility. When she came down to supper, when she
stood in the doorway, he gasped. She was in a silver sheath, the calyx
of a lily, her piled hair like black glass; she had the fragility and
costliness of a Viennese goblet; and her eyes were intense. He was
stirred to rise from the table and to hold the chair for her; and all
through supper he ate his bread dry because he felt that she would think
him common if he said "Will you hand me the butter?"



IV


She had reached the calmness of not caring whether her guests liked
the party or not, and a state of satisfied suspense in regard to Bea's
technique in serving, before Kennicott cried from the bay-window in
the living-room, "Here comes somebody!" and Mr. and Mrs. Luke Dawson
faltered in, at a quarter to eight. Then in a shy avalanche arrived
the entire aristocracy of Gopher Prairie: all persons engaged in a
profession, or earning more than twenty-five hundred dollars a year, or
possessed of grandparents born in America.

Even while they were removing their overshoes they were peeping at the
new decorations. Carol saw Dave Dyer secretively turn over the gold
pillows to find a price-tag, and heard Mr. Julius Flickerbaugh, the
attorney, gasp, "Well, I'll be switched," as he viewed the vermilion
print hanging against the Japanese obi. She was amused. But her high
spirits slackened as she beheld them form in dress parade, in a long,
silent, uneasy circle clear round the living-room. She felt that she had
been magically whisked back to her first party, at Sam Clark's.

"Have I got to lift them, like so many pigs of iron? I don't know that I
can make them happy, but I'll make them hectic."

A silver flame in the darkling circle, she whirled around, drew them
with her smile, and sang, "I want my party to be noisy and undignified!
This is the christening of my house, and I want you to help me have a
bad influence on it, so that it will be a giddy house. For me, won't you
all join in an old-fashioned square dance? And Mr. Dyer will call."

She had a record on the phonograph; Dave Dyer was capering in the center
of the floor, loose-jointed, lean, small, rusty headed, pointed of nose,
clapping his hands and shouting, "Swing y' pardners--alamun lef!"

Even the millionaire Dawsons and Ezra Stowbody and "Professor" George
Edwin Mott danced, looking only slightly foolish; and by rushing about
the room and being coy and coaxing to all persons over forty-five, Carol
got them into a waltz and a Virginia Reel. But when she left them to
disenjoy themselves in their own way Harry Haydock put a one-step record
on the phonograph, the younger people took the floor, and all the elders
sneaked back to their chairs, with crystallized smiles which meant,
"Don't believe I'll try this one myself, but I do enjoy watching the
youngsters dance."

Half of them were silent; half resumed the discussions of that afternoon
in the store. Ezra Stowbody hunted for something to say, hid a yawn, and
offered to Lyman Cass, the owner of the flour-mill, "How d' you folks
like the new furnace, Lym? Huh? So."

"Oh, let them alone. Don't pester them. They must like it, or they
wouldn't do it." Carol warned herself. But they gazed at her so
expectantly when she flickered past that she was reconvinced that in
their debauches of respectability they had lost the power of play as
well as the power of impersonal thought. Even the dancers were gradually
crushed by the invisible force of fifty perfectly pure and well-behaved
and negative minds; and they sat down, two by two. In twenty minutes the
party was again elevated to the decorum of a prayer-meeting.

"We're going to do something exciting," Carol exclaimed to her new
confidante, Vida Sherwin. She saw that in the growing quiet her voice
had carried across the room. Nat Hicks, Ella Stowbody, and Dave Dyer
were abstracted, fingers and lips slightly moving. She knew with a
cold certainty that Dave was rehearsing his "stunt" about the Norwegian
catching the hen, Ella running over the first lines of "An Old
Sweetheart of Mine," and Nat thinking of his popular parody on Mark
Antony's oration.

"But I will not have anybody use the word 'stunt' in my house," she
whispered to Miss Sherwin.

"That's good. I tell you: why not have Raymond Wutherspoon sing?"

"Raymie? Why, my dear, he's the most sentimental yearner in town!"

"See here, child! Your opinions on house-decorating are sound, but your
opinions of people are rotten! Raymie does wag his tail. But the poor
dear----Longing for what he calls 'self-expression' and no training in
anything except selling shoes. But he can sing. And some day when
he gets away from Harry Haydock's patronage and ridicule, he'll do
something fine."

Carol apologized for her superciliousness. She urged Raymie, and warned
the planners of "stunts," "We all want you to sing, Mr. Wutherspoon.
You're the only famous actor I'm going to let appear on the stage
tonight."

While Raymie blushed and admitted, "Oh, they don't want to hear me," he
was clearing his throat, pulling his clean handkerchief farther out of
his breast pocket, and thrusting his fingers between the buttons of his
vest.

In her affection for Raymie's defender, in her desire to "discover
artistic talent," Carol prepared to be delighted by the recital.

Raymie sang "Fly as a Bird," "Thou Art My Dove," and "When the Little
Swallow Leaves Its Tiny Nest," all in a reasonably bad offertory tenor.

Carol was shuddering with the vicarious shame which sensitive people
feel when they listen to an "elocutionist" being humorous, or to a
precocious child publicly doing badly what no child should do at all.
She wanted to laugh at the gratified importance in Raymie's half-shut
eyes; she wanted to weep over the meek ambitiousness which clouded like
an aura his pale face, flap ears, and sandy pompadour. She tried to look
admiring, for the benefit of Miss Sherwin, that trusting admirer of all
that was or conceivably could be the good, the true, and the beautiful.

At the end of the third ornithological lyric Miss Sherwin roused from
her attitude of inspired vision and breathed to Carol, "My! That was
sweet! Of course Raymond hasn't an unusually good voice, but don't you
think he puts such a lot of feeling into it?"

Carol lied blackly and magnificently, but without originality: "Oh yes,
I do think he has so much FEELING!"

She saw that after the strain of listening in a cultured manner the
audience had collapsed; had given up their last hope of being amused.
She cried, "Now we're going to play an idiotic game which I learned in
Chicago. You will have to take off your shoes, for a starter! After that
you will probably break your knees and shoulder-blades."

Much attention and incredulity. A few eyebrows indicating a verdict that
Doc Kennicott's bride was noisy and improper.

"I shall choose the most vicious, like Juanita Haydock and myself, as
the shepherds. The rest of you are wolves. Your shoes are the sheep.
The wolves go out into the hall. The shepherds scatter the sheep through
this room, then turn off all the lights, and the wolves crawl in from
the hall and in the darkness they try to get the shoes away from
the shepherds--who are permitted to do anything except bite and use
black-jacks. The wolves chuck the captured shoes out into the hall. No
one excused! Come on! Shoes off!"

Every one looked at every one else and waited for every one else to
begin.

Carol kicked off her silver slippers, and ignored the universal glance
at her arches. The embarrassed but loyal Vida Sherwin unbuttoned her
high black shoes. Ezra Stowbody cackled, "Well, you're a terror to old
folks. You're like the gals I used to go horseback-riding with, back in
the sixties. Ain't much accustomed to attending parties barefoot,
but here goes!" With a whoop and a gallant jerk Ezra snatched off his
elastic-sided Congress shoes.

The others giggled and followed.

When the sheep had been penned up, in the darkness the timorous wolves
crept into the living-room, squealing, halting, thrown out of their
habit of stolidity by the strangeness of advancing through nothingness
toward a waiting foe, a mysterious foe which expanded and grew more
menacing. The wolves peered to make out landmarks, they touched gliding
arms which did not seem to be attached to a body, they quivered with a
rapture of fear. Reality had vanished. A yelping squabble suddenly rose,
then Juanita Haydock's high titter, and Guy Pollock's astonished, "Ouch!
Quit! You're scalping me!"

Mrs. Luke Dawson galloped backward on stiff hands and knees into the
safety of the lighted hallway, moaning, "I declare, I nev' was so
upset in my life!" But the propriety was shaken out of her, and she
delightedly continued to ejaculate "Nev' in my LIFE" as she saw the
living-room door opened by invisible hands and shoes hurling through it,
as she heard from the darkness beyond the door a squawling, a bumping,
a resolute "Here's a lot of shoes. Come on, you wolves. Ow! Y' would,
would you!"

When Carol abruptly turned on the lights in the embattled living-room,
half of the company were sitting back against the walls, where they had
craftily remained throughout the engagement, but in the middle of the
floor Kennicott was wrestling with Harry Haydock--their collars torn
off, their hair in their eyes; and the owlish Mr. Julius Flickerbaugh
was retreating from Juanita Haydock, and gulping with unaccustomed
laughter. Guy Pollock's discreet brown scarf hung down his back. Young
Rita Simons's net blouse had lost two buttons, and betrayed more of her
delicious plump shoulder than was regarded as pure in Gopher Prairie.
Whether by shock, disgust, joy of combat, or physical activity, all the
party were freed from their years of social decorum. George Edwin Mott
giggled; Luke Dawson twisted his beard; Mrs. Clark insisted, "I did too,
Sam--I got a shoe--I never knew I could fight so terrible!"

Carol was certain that she was a great reformer.

She mercifully had combs, mirrors, brushes, needle and thread ready. She
permitted them to restore the divine decency of buttons.

The grinning Bea brought down-stairs a pile of soft thick sheets of
paper with designs of lotos blossoms, dragons, apes, in cobalt and
crimson and gray, and patterns of purple birds flying among sea-green
trees in the valleys of Nowhere.

"These," Carol announced, "are real Chinese masquerade costumes. I got
them from an importing shop in Minneapolis. You are to put them on over
your clothes, and please forget that you are Minnesotans, and turn into
mandarins and coolies and--and samurai (isn't it?), and anything else
you can think of."

While they were shyly rustling the paper costumes she disappeared. Ten
minutes after she gazed down from the stairs upon grotesquely ruddy
Yankee heads above Oriental robes, and cried to them, "The Princess
Winky Poo salutes her court!"

As they looked up she caught their suspense of admiration. They saw an
airy figure in trousers and coat of green brocade edged with gold; a
high gold collar under a proud chin; black hair pierced with jade pins;
a languid peacock fan in an out-stretched hand; eyes uplifted to a
vision of pagoda towers. When she dropped her pose and smiled down
she discovered Kennicott apoplectic with domestic pride--and gray Guy
Pollock staring beseechingly. For a second she saw nothing in all the
pink and brown mass of their faces save the hunger of the two men.

She shook off the spell and ran down. "We're going to have a real
Chinese concert. Messrs. Pollock, Kennicott, and, well, Stowbody are
drummers; the rest of us sing and play the fife."

The fifes were combs with tissue paper; the drums were tabourets and the
sewing-table. Loren Wheeler, editor of the Dauntless, led the orchestra,
with a ruler and a totally inaccurate sense of rhythm. The music was a
reminiscence of tom-toms heard at circus fortune-telling tents or at
the Minnesota State Fair, but the whole company pounded and puffed and
whined in a sing-song, and looked rapturous.

Before they were quite tired of the concert Carol led them in a dancing
procession to the dining-room, to blue bowls of chow mein, with Lichee
nuts and ginger preserved in syrup.

None of them save that city-rounder Harry Haydock had heard of any
Chinese dish except chop sooey. With agreeable doubt they ventured
through the bamboo shoots into the golden fried noodles of the chow
mein; and Dave Dyer did a not very humorous Chinese dance with Nat
Hicks; and there was hubbub and contentment.

Carol relaxed, and found that she was shockingly tired. She had carried
them on her thin shoulders. She could not keep it up. She longed for
her father, that artist at creating hysterical parties. She thought of
smoking a cigarette, to shock them, and dismissed the obscene thought
before it was quite formed. She wondered whether they could for five
minutes be coaxed to talk about something besides the winter top
of Knute Stamquist's Ford, and what Al Tingley had said about his
mother-in-law. She sighed, "Oh, let 'em alone. I've done enough." She
crossed her trousered legs, and snuggled luxuriously above her saucer
of ginger; she caught Pollock's congratulatory still smile, and thought
well of herself for having thrown a rose light on the pallid lawyer;
repented the heretical supposition that any male save her husband
existed; jumped up to find Kennicott and whisper, "Happy, my lord? . . .
No, it didn't cost much!"

"Best party this town ever saw. Only----Don't cross your legs in that
costume. Shows your knees too plain."

She was vexed. She resented his clumsiness. She returned to Guy Pollock
and talked of Chinese religions--not that she knew anything whatever
about Chinese religions, but he had read a book on the subject as, on
lonely evenings in his office, he had read at least one book on every
subject in the world. Guy's thin maturity was changing in her vision
to flushed youth and they were roaming an island in the yellow sea of
chatter when she realized that the guests were beginning that cough
which indicated, in the universal instinctive language, that they
desired to go home and go to bed.

While they asserted that it had been "the nicest party they'd ever
seen--my! so clever and original," she smiled tremendously, shook hands,
and cried many suitable things regarding children, and being sure to
wrap up warmly, and Raymie's singing and Juanita Haydock's prowess at
games. Then she turned wearily to Kennicott in a house filled with quiet
and crumbs and shreds of Chinese costumes.

He was gurgling, "I tell you, Carrie, you certainly are a wonder, and
guess you're right about waking folks up. Now you've showed 'em how,
they won't go on having the same old kind of parties and stunts and
everything. Here! Don't touch a thing! Done enough. Pop up to bed, and
I'll clear up."

His wise surgeon's-hands stroked her shoulder, and her irritation at his
clumsiness was lost in his strength.



V

From the Weekly Dauntless:


One of the most delightful social events of recent months was held
Wednesday evening in the housewarming of Dr. and Mrs. Kennicott, who
have completely redecorated their charming home on Poplar Street, and
is now extremely nifty in modern color scheme. The doctor and his bride
were at home to their numerous friends and a number of novelties in
diversions were held, including a Chinese orchestra in original and
genuine Oriental costumes, of which Ye Editor was leader. Dainty
refreshments were served in true Oriental style, and one and all voted a
delightful time.



VI


The week after, the Chet Dashaways gave a party. The circle of mourners
kept its place all evening, and Dave Dyer did the "stunt" of the
Norwegian and the hen.

 On her first day in Gopher Prairie, Carol goes for a walk to inspect the town. She covers the entirety of the small town on foot in thirty-two minutes. Most of the buildings and houses on Main Street appear haphazardly constructed. The Minniemashie House, the town's hotel and "fine-dining" establishment, has flyspecked windows, dirty floors, and stained tablecloths. Carol sees a cat sleeping on some lettuce in a grocery store window. The ugliness of the town unnerves her. When she returns home, however, she only tells her husband that the town looks "very interesting." Another young lady, Bea Sorenson, arrives in Gopher Prairie on the same day. However, Bea comes from a farm, not a larger city. Bored with farm life, she has decided to find a job in Gopher Prairie. She walks around town at the same time Carol does. Unlike Carol, Bea feels awestruck by everything she sees, as she has never visited a town as large as Gopher Prairie. Sam Clark holds a party to for Carol and Will at which Carol meets several townspeople who allegedly represent the town's "smart young set." Several guests boast to Carol about the greatness of the town, informing her several times that the allegedly notable automobile manufacturer Percy Bresnahan was born and raised in Gopher Prairie. Carol feels uncomfortable throughout the party. Finding the conversation dull, she tries to be entertaining by keeping up a frivolous and somewhat shocking conversation. While the others appear entertained, they do not join her efforts to be amusing. Instead, Sam Clark invites a couple of guests to perform their individual stunts as they do at every party. When Carol tries discussing important social issues such as the labor movement, she learns that the people of Gopher Prairie do not approve of unions and profit sharing. Privately, Kennicott advises her to watch what she says because the townspeople are very conservative. A few days later, the town newspaper publishes an account of the party. One day, Kennicott takes Carol along on a hunting trip. Carol finds the countryside and farmlands more beautiful than Main Street. She also begins to take pride in her role as housewife. She hires Bea Sorenson as a maid but treats her like a friend. One afternoon, Vida Sherwin, the town's high school teacher, visits Carol. Vida declares that the town needs people like Carol. She also tells Carol that some people in town, including herself and the lawyer Guy Pollock, share Carol's interests. Happy to find others she can talk to, Carol invites Guy and Vida to supper and likes Mr. Pollock immediately because he is one of the few people who does not talk her ear off about how wonderful Gopher Prairie is. Carol redecorates her house, spending a great deal of time and money. She paints the parlor blue and yellow and decorates it with Japanese ornaments she orders from Minneapolis. The refurnishing of the house attracts much attention. The widow Mrs. Bogart, a neighbor, visits Carol to look at he renovations. Very religious and rather stingy, Mrs. Bogart comments on Carol's extravagance and states that she and her husband should attend church more often. Carol becomes more conscious about her spending. When she discovers that the men of Gopher Prairie make their wives beg for money for their household expenses, she asks Kennicott for a regular allowance. Kennicott agrees to give her money of her own. Carol hosts a party and makes extravagant plans for it. Although Kennicott considers himself the master of his house, Carol orders him around like a child. The guests arrive and admire her new furniture. Determined to host a lively party, Carol makes the guests dance and not perform their usual party stunts. She makes them play a game in the dark where they take off their shoes and pretend to be wolves. Next, she gives her guests paper costumes for a Chinese masquerade and serves them a Chinese dinner. The town publishes an article about the party. Carol hopes that other townspeople will also host entertaining parties. However, the next week someone hosts a rather dull party at which the guests perform their usual stunts. Carol feels disappointed that she has not been able to influence the townspeople to change their natures.

