IV
Kennicott had returned at midnight. At breakfast he said
four several times that he had missed her every moment.
On her way to market Sam Clark hailed her, "The top o' the
mornin' to yez! Going to stop and pass the time of day mit
Sam'l? Warmer, eh? What'd the doc's thermometer say it
was? Say, you folks better come round and visit with us,
one of these evenings. Don't be so dog-gone proud, staying by
yourselves."
Champ Perry the pioneer, wheat-buyer at the elevator,
stopped her in the post-office, held her hand in his withered
paws, peered at her with faded eyes, and chuckled, "You are
so fresh and blooming, my dear. Mother was saying t'other day
that a sight of you was better 'n a dose of medicine."
In the Bon Ton Store she found Guy Pollock tentatively
buying a modest gray scarf. "We haven't seen you for so
long," she said. "Wouldn't you like to come in and play cribbage,
some evening?" As though he meant it, Pollock begged,
"May I, really?"
While she was purchasing two yards of malines the vocal
Raymie Wutherspoon tiptoed up to her, his long sallow face
bobbing, and he besought, "You've just got to come back to
my department and see a pair of patent leather slippers I set
aside for you."
In a manner of more than sacerdotal reverence he unlaced
her boots, tucked her skirt about her ankles, slid on the
slippers. She took them.
"You're a good salesman," she said.
"I'm not a salesman at all! I just like elegant things. All
this is so inartistic." He indicated with a forlornly waving
hand the shelves of shoe-boxes, the seat of thin wood
perforated in rosettes, the display of shoe-trees and tin boxes of
blacking, the lithograph of a smirking young woman with cherry
cheeks who proclaimed in the exalted poetry of advertising,
"My tootsies never got hep to what pedal perfection was till
I got a pair of clever classy Cleopatra Shoes."
"But sometimes," Raymie sighed, "there is a pair of dainty
little shoes like these, and I set them aside for some one who
will appreciate. When I saw these I said right away, `Wouldn't
it be nice if they fitted Mrs. Kennicott,' and I meant to speak
to you first chance I had. I haven't forgotten our jolly talks
at Mrs. Gurrey's!"
That evening Guy Pollock came in and, though Kennicott
instantly impressed him into a cribbage game, Carol was
happy again.
