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 ingénue 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 café
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.
