Main Street, Sinclair Lewis [red white and royal blue hardcover txt] 📗

down my neck,” volunteered Mrs. Dave Dyer, with an unpleasant look at Carol and, turning her back, she bubbled at Rita Simons, “Dearie, won’t you run in this evening? I’ve got the loveliest new Butterick pattern I want to show you.”

Carol crept back to her chair. In the fervor of discussing the game they ignored her. She was not used to being a wallflower. She struggled to keep from oversensitiveness, from becoming unpopular by the sure method of believing that she was unpopular; but she hadn’t much reserve of patience, and at the end of the second game, when Ella Stowbody sniffily asked her, “Are you going to send to Minneapolis for your dress for the next soirée⁠—heard you were,” Carol said “Don’t know yet” with unnecessary sharpness.

She was relieved by the admiration with which the jeune fille Rita Simons looked at the steel buckles on her pumps; but she resented Mrs. Howland’s tart demand, “Don’t you find that new couch of yours is too broad to be practical?” She nodded, then shook her head, and touchily left Mrs. Howland to get out of it any meaning she desired. Immediately she wanted to make peace. She was close to simpering in the sweetness with which she addressed Mrs. Howland: “I think that is the prettiest display of beef-tea your husband has in his store.”

“Oh yes, Gopher Prairie isn’t so much behind the times,” gibed Mrs. Howland. Someone giggled.

Their rebuffs made her haughty; her haughtiness irritated them to franker rebuffs; they were working up to a state of painfully righteous war when they were saved by the coming of food.

Though Juanita Haydock was highly advanced in the matters of finger-bowls, doilies, and bath-mats, her “refreshments” were typical of all the afternoon-coffees. Juanita’s best friends, Mrs. Dyer and Mrs. Dashaway, passed large dinner plates, each with a spoon, a fork, and a coffee cup without saucer. They apologized and discussed the afternoon’s game as they passed through the thicket of women’s feet. Then they distributed hot buttered rolls, coffee poured from an enamelware pot, stuffed olives, potato salad, and angel’s-food cake. There was, even in the most strictly conforming Gopher Prairie circles, a certain option as to collations. The olives need not be stuffed. Doughnuts were in some houses well thought of as a substitute for the hot buttered rolls. But there was in all the town no heretic save Carol who omitted angel’s-food.

They ate enormously. Carol had a suspicion that the thriftier housewives made the afternoon treat do for evening supper.

She tried to get back into the current. She edged over to Mrs. McGanum. Chunky, amiable, young Mrs. McGanum with her breast and arms of a milkmaid, and her loud delayed laugh which burst startlingly from a sober face, was the daughter of old Dr. Westlake, and the wife of Westlake’s partner, Dr. McGanum. Kennicott asserted that Westlake and McGanum and their contaminated families were tricky, but Carol had found them gracious. She asked for friendliness by crying to Mrs. McGanum, “How is the baby’s throat now?” and she was attentive while Mrs. McGanum rocked and knitted and placidly described symptoms.

Vida Sherwin came in after school, with Miss Ethel Villets, the town librarian. Miss Sherwin’s optimistic presence gave Carol more confidence. She talked. She informed the circle, “I drove almost down to Wahkeenyan with Will, a few days ago. Isn’t the country lovely! And I do admire the Scandinavian farmers down there so: their big red barns and silos and milking-machines and everything. Do you all know that lonely Lutheran church, with the tin-covered spire, that stands out alone on a hill? It’s so bleak; somehow it seems so brave. I do think the Scandinavians are the hardiest and best people⁠—”

“Oh, do you think so?” protested Mrs. Jackson Elder. “My husband says the Svenskas that work in the planing-mill are perfectly terrible⁠—so silent and cranky, and so selfish, the way they keep demanding raises. If they had their way they’d simply ruin the business.”

“Yes, and they’re simply ghastly hired girls!” wailed Mrs. Dave Dyer. “I swear, I work myself to skin and bone trying to please my hired girls⁠—when I can get them! I do everything in the world for them. They can have their gentleman friends call on them in the kitchen any time, and they get just the same to eat as we do, if there’s, any left over, and I practically never jump on them.”

Juanita Haydock rattled, “They’re ungrateful, all that class of people. I do think the domestic problem is simply becoming awful. I don’t know what the country’s coming to, with these Scandahoofian clodhoppers demanding every cent you can save, and so ignorant and impertinent, and on my word, demanding bathtubs and everything⁠—as if they weren’t mighty good and lucky at home if they got a bath in the washtub.”

They were off, riding hard. Carol thought of Bea and waylaid them:

“But isn’t it possibly the fault of the mistresses if the maids are ungrateful? For generations we’ve given them the leavings of food, and holes to live in. I don’t want to boast, but I must say I don’t have much trouble with Bea. She’s so friendly. The Scandinavians are sturdy and honest⁠—”

Mrs. Dave Dyer snapped, “Honest? Do you call it honest to hold us up for every cent of pay they can get? I can’t say that I’ve had any of them steal anything (though you might call it stealing to eat so much that a roast of beef hardly lasts three days), but just the same I don’t intend to let them think they can put anything over on me! I always make them pack and unpack their trunks downstairs, right under my eyes, and then I know they aren’t being tempted to dishonesty by any slackness on my part!”

“How much do the maids get here?” Carol ventured.

Mrs. B. J. Gougerling, wife of the banker, stated in a shocked manner, “Any place from three-fifty to five-fifty a week! I know positively that Mrs. Clark, after swearing that she wouldn’t weaken and encourage them in their outrageous demands, went and