I
SHE wondered all the way home what her sensations would be.
She wondered about it so much that she had every sensation
she had imagined. She was excited by each familiar porch,
each hearty "Well, well!" and flattered to be, for a day, the
most important news of the community. She bustled about,
making calls. Juanita Haydock bubbled over their Washington
encounter, and took Carol to her social bosom. This ancient
opponent seemed likely to be her most intimate friend, for
Vida Sherwin, though she was cordial, stood back and watched
for imported heresies.
In the evening Carol went to the mill. The mystical
Om-Om-Om of the dynamos in the electric-light plant behind the
mill was louder in the darkness. Outside sat the night watchman,
Champ Perry. He held up his stringy hands and
squeaked, "We've all missed you terrible."
Who in Washington would miss her?
Who in Washington could be depended upon like Guy
Pollock? When she saw him on the street, smiling as always,
he seemed an eternal thing, a part of her own self.
After a week she decided that she was neither glad nor
sorry to be back. She entered each day with the matter-of-fact
attitude with which she had gone to her office in Washington.
It was her task; there would be mechanical details and
meaningless talk; what of it?
The only problem which she had approached with emotion
proved insignificant. She had, on the train, worked herself
up to such devotion that she was willing to give up her own
room, to try to share all of her life with Kennicott.
He mumbled, ten minutes after she had entered the house,
"Say, I've kept your room for you like it was. I've kind of
come round to your way of thinking. Don't see why folks
need to get on each other's nerves just because they're friendly.
Darned if I haven't got so I like a little privacy and mulling
things over by myself."
