IV
For some reason which was totally mysterious to Carol,
Maud Dyer seemed to resent her return. At the Jolly Seventeen
Maud giggled nervously, "Well, I suppose you found
war-work a good excuse to stay away and have a swell time.
Juanita! Don't you think we ought to make Carrie tell us
about the officers she met in Washington?"
They rustled and stared. Carol looked at them. Their
curiosity seemed natural and unimportant.
"Oh yes, yes indeed, have to do that some day," she
yawned.
She no longer took Aunt Bessie Smail seriously enough to
struggle for independence. She saw that Aunt Bessie did not
mean to intrude; that she wanted to do things for all the
Kennicotts. Thus Carol hit upon the tragedy of old age, which
is not that it is less vigorous than youth, but that it is not
needed by youth; that its love and prosy sageness, so
important a few years ago, so gladly offered now, are rejected
with laughter. She divined that when Aunt Bessie came in
with a jar of wild-grape jelly she was waiting in hope of being
asked for the recipe. After that she could be irritated but she
could not be depressed by Aunt Bessie's simoom of questioning.
She wasn't depressed even when she heard Mrs. Bogart
observe, "Now we've got prohibition it seems to me that the
next problem of the country ain't so much abolishing
cigarettes as it is to make folks observe the Sabbath and arrest
these law-breakers that play baseball and go to the movies
and all on the Lord's Day."
Only one thing bruised Carol's vanity. Few people asked her
about Washington. They who had most admiringly begged
Percy Bresnahan for his opinions were least interested in her
facts. She laughed at herself when she saw that she had
expected to be at once a heretic and a returned hero; she was
very reasonable and merry about it; and it hurt just as much
as ever.
