Main Street

nce and found that the lambs were wolves. There was no way out between the

indifference of cities. She practised saying to Kennicott, "Think perhaps I'll run down to St. Paul for a

All she wanted wa

before citizens who a week ago had been amusing objects of s

on's grocery. She besought, "Oh, how do you

arry simply has to have his ce

op exulting, "She didn't mak

walked the streets with her head down. When she spied Mrs. McGanum or Mrs. Dyer ahead she crossed over with an elaborate pretense of looking at

that she had won past a thousand enemies armed with ridicule. She told herself that her sensitiveness was preposterous, but daily she was thrown into panic. She saw curtains slide back into innocent smoothness. Old women who had been entering their houses slipped out again to stare at her-in the wintry quiet sh

ntered Ludelmeyer's. The grocer, his clerk, and neurotic Mrs. Dave Dyer had been giggling about something. They halted, looked embarrassed, babbled about onions. Carol felt guilty. That evening w

that they were being rude, but they meant to have it understood that they were prosperous and "not scared of no doctor's wife." They often said, "One man's as good as another-and a darn sight better." This motto, however, they did not commend to farmer customers who had had crop failures. The Yankee merchants were crabbed; and Ole

or I'll snatch that fresh delivery-boy bald-headed." But Carol had never been able to play the game of friendly ru

as under a blanket on a shelf, a part in a tin ginger-snap box, the rest heaped like a nest of black-cotton snakes upon a flour-barrel which was surrounded by brooms, Norwegian Bibles, dried cod for ludfisk, boxes of apricots, and a pair and a half of lumbermen's rubber-footed boots. The place

as that Axel Egge's was "so

of clothes that she w

smart suit with lines unfamiliar to the dragging yellow and pink frocks of the town. The Widow Bogart's stare, from her porch, indicated, "Well I never saw anything like that before!" Mrs. McGanum stopped Carol at the notions shop to hint, "My, that's a nice suit-w

quite so much as thes

But she was sickened by glimpses of the gang of boys from fourteen to twenty who loafed before Dyer's Drug Store, smoking cigarettes, displaying "fa

lips over every love-scene at the Rosebud Movie Palace. At the counter of the Greek Confectionery Parlor, while they ate dreadful messes of decayed bananas, acid cherries, whipped cream, and gelatinous ice-cream, they screamed to one another, "Hey, lemme 'lone," "Quit dog

uld function; that boys who were not compounded of the gutter and the mining-camp were mollycoddles and unhappy. She had take

observation-posts more flushingly than did Mrs. Dr. Kennicott. In shame she knew that they glanced appraisingly at her snowy overshoes, speculating a

senile and cruel on the day when she

lar. But Cy was a capitalist in charivaris. He returned with an entirely new group, and this time there were three automobile fenders and a carnival rattle. When Kennicott again interrupted his shaving, Cy piped, "Naw, you got to give us two dollars," and he got it. A week later Cy rigged a tic-tac to a window of the living-room, and the tattoo out of the darkness frightened Carol into screaming. Since then, in four months, she had

esting when he set his mongrel on a ki

ve it was a loft which Cy Bogart and Earl Haydock, young brother of Harry, used as a den, for smoking, hidin

velations, Carol had gone into the stable-garage to find a hamme

ake and swipe some mushrats out of

beat off!" grumb

Member when we were just kids, and u

. Go

"Sil

f you chew tobacco y

ur old lady

e. "But she says she k

he time before he married this-here girl from the Cities? He u

to the girl fr

s she?" con

How'

who I mean

loose boards, silence,

one time. But Ma says she's stuck-up as hell. Ma's always talking about her. Ma says if Mrs. Kenn

. Si

says she has to laugh till she almost busts every time she sees Mrs. Kennicott peerading along the street with that '

Ma says she knows posolutely that she never made but eighteen a week-Ma says that when she's lived here a while she won't go round making a

er for ten minutes. Jeeze, you'd 'a' died laughing. She was there all alone, and she must 'a' spent five minutes getting a picture straight. It was funny as hel

ht for her wedding. Jever notice these low-cut dresses and these thin shimmy-shirts she wears? I ha

Carol

wn could discuss even her garments, her body. She fe

dow-shades, all the shades flush with the sill

I

e found a luxury of forgiveness. She could not remember any fascinatingly wicked hero of fiction who chewed tobacco. She asserted that it proved him to be a man of the bold free West. She tried to align him with the hairy-chested heroes of the motion-pictu

digest, I do wash my dirty paws and scratch. I'm not a cool slim goddess on a column. There aren't any! He gave it up for me. He stands

, and when she noticed that he was chewing an un

iry wenches and mischief-making queens, had used before her, and which a million million women will know

ge snow-glaring lake. She had her first sight of his mother, except the glimpse at the wedding. Mrs. Kennicott had a hushed and delicate breeding which dignified her woodeny over

u've taught him how to play. Last night I heard you both laughing about the

Kennicott flit about the kitchen she was better able to translate Kennicott himself. He was matter-of-fact, yes, and incurably mature. He

turned to Gopher Prairie in a throbbing calm like those golden drugged seconds

nd, through deep snow. Kennicott was cheerful. He hailed Loren Wheeler, "Behave yourself while I been away?" The editor bellowed, "B' gosh you stayed so long that all your patients

y can't I be? But can I sit back all my life and be satisfied with 'Hey, folks'

nd plucked compliments: Mrs. Dr. Westlake had pronounced Carol a "very sweet, bright, cultured young woman," and Brad

rant. She hinted, "You're a great brooder, child. Buck up now. The town's quit criticizing you, almost entirely. Com

elt a compulsion, but she

son who was real

e, and as a companion altogether superior to the young matrons of the Jolly Seventeen. Daily they became more frankly two girls playing at housework. Bea artlessly considered Carol the most beautiful and accomplished lady in the country; she was

kely to end with both of them by the table, while Bea gurgled over the ice-man's attempt to kiss her, or Carol admitted, "Everybody knows that the doctor is lots more clever

lcome upon whic

e Jolly Seventeen; she delivered herself to the judgment of the town only when she went shopping and on the ritualistic occasions of formal afternoon calls, when Mrs. Lyman Cass or Mrs. George Edwin Mott, with clean gloves and minute handkerchiefs and sealskin c

the matrimonial tension and be a fanciful girl for a time. But now that he was gone the house was listeningly empty. Bea was out this afternoon-presumably drinki

sat