“No, you’re a scientist. Oh, I will
try and get the music out of Mr. Elder. Only,
why can’t he let it come out, instead of
being ashamed of it, and always talking about hunting
dogs? But I will try. Is it all right now?”
“Sure. But there’s one other thing.
You might give me some attention, too!”
“That’s unjust! You have everything
I am!”
“No, I haven’t. You think you respect
me—you always hand out some spiel about
my being so ‘useful.’ But you never
think of me as having ambitions, just as much as you
have——”
“Perhaps not. I think of you as being perfectly
satisfied.”
“Well, I’m not, not by a long shot!
I don’t want to be a plug general practitioner
all my life, like Westlake, and die in harness because
I can’t get out of it, and have ’em say,
’He was a good fellow, but he couldn’t
save a cent.’ Not that I care a whoop what
they say, after I’ve kicked in and can’t
hear ’em, but I want to put enough money away
so you and I can be independent some day, and not
have to work unless I feel like it, and I want to
have a good house—by golly, I’ll have
as good a house as anybody in this town!—and
if we want to travel and see your Tormina or whatever
it is, why we can do it, with enough money in our
jeans so we won’t have to take anything off anybody,
or fret about our old age. You never worry about
what might happen if we got sick and didn’t
have a good fat wad salted away, do you!”
“I don’t suppose I do.”
“Well then, I have to do it for you. And
if you think for one moment I want to be stuck in
this burg all my life, and not have a chance to travel
and see the different points of interest and all that,
then you simply don’t get me. I want to
have a squint at the world, much’s you do.
Only, I’m practical about it. First place,
I’m going to make the money—I’m
investing in good safe farmlands. Do you understand
why now?”
“Yes.”
“Will you try and see if you can’t think
of me as something more than just a dollar-chasing
roughneck?”
“Oh, my dear, I haven’t been just!
I am difficile. And I won’t call on
the Dillons! And if Dr. Dillon is working for
Westlake and McGanum, I hate him!”
That December she was in love with her husband.
She romanticized herself not as a great reformer but
as the wife of a country physician. The realities
of the doctor’s household were colored by her
pride.
Late at night, a step on the wooden porch, heard through
her confusion of sleep; the storm-door opened; fumbling
over the inner door-panels; the buzz of the electric
bell. Kennicott muttering “Gol darn it,”
but patiently creeping out of bed, remembering to
draw the covers up to keep her warm, feeling for slippers
and bathrobe, clumping down-stairs.
From below, half-heard in her drowsiness, a colloquy
in the pidgin-German of the farmers who have forgotten
the Old Country language without learning the new:
